Friday, May 20, 2016

Revolution News Update, Vol. 4 Surrender Bernie edition

(Yesterday), Chris Cuomo had the temerity to use conditional language in speaking of Hillary Clinton’s chances of becoming the Democratic nominee for President.
It didn’t go over well.
The relevant portion of the transcript is below:
CUOMO (CNN): So you get into the general election, if you’re the nominee for your party, and —
CLINTON: I will be the nominee for my party, Chris. That is already done, in effect. There is no way that I won’t be.
CUOMO: There’s a Senator from Vermont who has a different take on that —
CLINTON: Well —
CUOMO: He says he’s going to fight to the end —
CLINTON: Yeah, it’s strange.
It’s hard to take Clinton’s first comment as anything but a statement that nothing California could possibly do in its primary could change the outcome of the Democratic race — even though it’s now widely accepted that Clinton can’t win the primary with pledged delegates alone. This means that the Democratic nomination will be decided by super-delegates, who don’t vote for more than two months — at the Democratic National Convention, to be held in Philadelphia on July 25th. As the DNC has repeatedly advised the media, those super-delegates can and often do change their minds — and are free to do so up until they actually vote this summer.
CNN analyst Carl Bernstein noted several times Wednesday night that between mid-May and late July countless things could happen that would cause super-delegates to move toward Sanders en masse.

Seth Abramson is a dreamer, a bit ungrounded, but it's the Queen's reality I'm having more trouble with.  Just a bit too dictatorial for my taste.  "California, your votes won't be counted because they don't matter"?  Once upon a time -- not too long ago, in this galaxy -- Democrats called tactics like that voter suppression and disenfranchisement.

I had a brief conversation with one of David Brock's employees on Twitter this past week, mentioned something about 'tyranny of the majority", she didn't know what that meant and refused to try to figure it out.  You can't make the horse's asses drink the water.

My two observations about Hillbot behavior this cycle are 1) they just don't care that she's a war-mongering, lying, corporate shill, and 2) they see people like me saying things like that about Hillary as a personal attack upon themselves.  This is chosen ignorance.  The blind who will not see.

It's hard to hold them fully accountable for their obtuseness and misdirected anger when it is coming directly from the top.  I'm trying real hard, Ringo, to give 'em a pass, but on some level the only thing left to do is disengage.  That's what I have done and am doing with the worst and dumbest among their lot.

-- Maha:

I told someone this morning that it’s starting to feel like 1971 again; Sanders supporters are the antiwar movement, and the Democratic Party and its loyalists are the Nixon Administration. What should have been a temporary disagreement is turning into a generation-changing moment that will hurt the Democratic Party for years to come.

It feels more like 1980 to me, with Sanders as Ted Kennedy and Clinton as Jimmy Carter.  That ugly split in the Democratic Party gave us Ronald Reagan, and the Dems, in their shock, awe, and fear turned toward more autocratic, top-down authority in their candidate selection process, aka superdelegates, the unelected Democratic nobility.

What parties do tend to do is to react to the last election. 1972 was a real trauma for the Democrats—the beginning of the end of the New Deal coalition. Then Jimmy Carter loses in 1980—two Republican landslides in 10 years. In each case, the Democrats were very unhappy with their nominees and their president, for different reasons. They thought George McGovern was too far to the left, that his coalition alienated the regular party and so on. 1972 was also what created the Reagan Democrats who by 1980 were voting Republican.

[...]

How did the bitter fight between Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy for the Democratic nomination in 1980 figure in the Hunt Commission’s deliberations?

It was a particularly ugly fight that left very deep wounds in the party. As those floor debates were going on and Kennedy was making his statement speech, there were no party leaders on the floor. There was nobody there to put things back together.

The McGovern-Fraser reforms were aimed at opening up the party to other factions, particularly the anti-war faction in the late ’60s and early ’70s. But that didn’t mean that they wanted to cut out the entire party apparatus, which is what happened. A lot of what the Hunt Commission talked about was restoring the balance at the nominating convention.

The Hunt Commission brought the theory of superdelegates into practice; that, as Debbie Wasserman-Schultz has enunciated, "Unpledged delegates exist really to make sure that party leaders and elected officials don’t have to be in a position where they are running against grassroots activists."

Those dirty hippies.  Freaking peasants, what do they know?

-- The Bradblog interviews Jill Stein on their most recent podcast, which means you can listen to it at your leisure.  Here's bit from it.

"The guys running the show in the Democratic Party are basically the funders --- and that's predatory banks, fossil fuel giants, war profiteers, and insurance companies," Stein tells me. "With the Democratic Party you see basically a 'fake left-go right' situation, where they allow principled, inspired campaigns to stand up and be seen, but they sabotage them when push comes to shove. That, unfortunately, is what we see going on right now with the Sanders campaign, which is making a valiant effort here to do the right thing and change the party."

[...]

"This politics of fear that tells you you have to vote against what you're afraid of, instead of for what you believe in --- the politics of fear has a track record. It has delivered everything we were afraid of. All of the things you were told you had to bite your tongue and let the 'lesser evil' speak for you --- we've gotten all those things, by the droves. The expanding wars, the meltdown of the climate, the offshoring of our jobs, the attack on immigrants. We've gotten all of that." Stein says. "Not that there aren't some differences between the two parties, but they're not enough to save your life, to save your job, or to save your planet. This is a race to the bottom between the two sold-out corporate parties."

-- And just so we don't leave anybody out: Gary Johnson of the Libertarians has picked his running mate for 2016, and it's former Massachusetts Governor William Weld.  That's the #NeverTrump wing of the GOP's very best option.  Need to do what I can again to help those folks along, if only so that the Hillbots don't keep hatin' on the player, and not the plutocratic game.

Related to that, a report that the Koch Bros would funding the Johnson-Weld ticket to an eight-figure tune was gently denied by the campaign.

Five and a half months to go 'til November, the TDP state convention in a month -- I predict another Hillaryian shitshow like Nevada, what with the odious Gilberto Hinojosa already spreading his hate of Sandernistas in a now-deleted FB post -- and then the disrupting going on at both national conventions this summer.  Hurricanes or no, we're in for a really rough ride.

13 comments:

Gadfly said...

You got it on 1980 redux.

On Gary (no I don't want to see your) Johnson, dunno if you saw a Tweet of mine yesterday; a lot slimier past, a lot more hardcore law-and-order past, then he tries to pretend today. (I was in NM during his second term as governor, after he'd already started doing his "pivot.") But, in his previous prez run, he fell in with quasi-Roger Stone types.

meme said...

2015 Sanders became a Democrat, reason he wanted to run as a Democrat. 1991 to 2015 he was not a Democrat. Why didn't he run as an independent? Bernie supporters are delusional and your hate for the Clintons match the Republican hate for them. Why is that? Want to be third party do so but don't come in at the last moment and complain about the rules.

For the record I voted in the Republican primary run-off, reason I voted in the Republican primary.

Want to start a revolution go buy guns, it certainly is easy in Texas. Start your revolution.

But if you like Texas the way it is, keeping the same mentality you have will accomplish that and you will defeat the big D monster.

What actually has Sanders accomplished in 25 years as congressman and Senator?

PDiddie said...

Manny: stop letting John Cobarruvias post for you.

Gadfly said...

HAH! Per PD, Manny, Sanders has claimed to be "independent" because Vermont doesn't require official party identification. In reality, since his first re-election to the HOUSE, and in all his Senate campaigns, Vermont's state Dem party has never officially backed a candidate against Sanders.

As for what he's accomplished? This (which is much, much more than Hillz): http://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2016/01/sanders-vs-clinton-whos-real-can-do.html

meme said...

Read the link and the question remains what has he done as a congressman and senator, he certainly has been in office much longer than HRC. The article goes back to his days as mayor, is that when he was supporting making weapons to go kill peasants in Central America? If a weapon is make it Vermont he is pro weapon, other than Iraq what little war efforts during Obama has he opposed?

Or maybe his big support for the making of weapons, or supporting the NRA http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/09/bernie-sanders-loves-this-1-trillion-war-machine.html

I personally, not being white, have trouble with Sanders behind the scenes efforts to prevent granting residency to long time undocumented persons during Bush efforts to pass an amnesty ( http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/19/politics/bernie-sanders-immigration-reform-2016/ ). I guess I don't have that white entitlement mentality. I don't agree with much of what Clinton has done but I know where she stands, which more than Sanders who operates in the shadows.

The Daily beast is not considered conservative is it?

Maybe if you studied your Bernie god a little better you would not be as closed minded.

By the way that link was worthless, here is a better link for people who want to claim that Sanders is a god

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/10/6/1428616/-Bernie-Sanders-What-the-Hell-Have-You-Done-for-Us-Lately

There are lies, damn lies and statistics, the article that was given falls in one of those categories.

Did not know who John Cobarruvias was, if he believes like I do I guess he is okay, did he vote for Jeb Bush?, I did.

Gadfly said...

Both Perry and I know about his stance on guns, and on F-35s. Nothing new; I've blogged fairly extensively about both. Both of us plan to vote Green. Bernie's not a god. I vote for ideas, not people. Otherwise, Markos, proprietor of Daily Kos, is not that liberal, hates people who are truly of the left, and did a de facto ban on me by freezing my account a whole decade ago.

As for the immigration issue, Sanders has explained his stance and why, and many Latino activism groups had the same stance.

In most of this, he's still better than Hillz, and definitely better than her on single payer and finance industry regulation.

As for "love," I love someone who is an apparent Repug ... by your own voting admission ... lecturing people of the left how to vote and why.

Are you selectively clueless, or are you clueless across the board?

Gadfly said...

As for Bernie and immigration, Manny? Bernie at Friendship Park:
https://www.facebook.com/berniesanders/posts/1052658111455859

meme said...

Bernie became pro immigrant when he wanted to be president.

I vote smart, I vote for the Republican that is most moderate on issues that I care. Want to know why who ever wins that Republican primary is going to represent me and all other people that live in Texas (state wide elections). I consider that voting smart.

In your way of thinking, if you had lived in Germany in in the 1920s and 1930s, you would not have cast a vote against the Nazi party, it is a matter of principle.

I will take my way of thinking and voting over your principles any day of the week.

In the General I often vote Green or Libertarian, but I do so knowing that my vote will not elect the Republican. There are plenty of very good Republicans and there are plenty of very bad Democrats.

meme said...

Immigration and Bernie, it is called pandering,

At an immigration forum in Las Vegas on Sunday, O’Malley accused the rivals he's trailing of only supporting an immigration overhaul to win votes.

“When comprehensive immigration reform was up for a vote in the Congress, Senator Sanders went on Lou Dobbs’s show—are you familiar with Lou Dobbs?—and said that immigrants take our jobs and depress our wages,” O’Malley said. “Not only are those statements flat-out wrong, they actually harm the consensus.”

In that 2007 appearance, on CNN, Sanders said, “If poverty is increasing and if wages are going down, I don’t know why we need millions of people to be coming into this country as guest workers who will work for lower wages than American workers and drive wages down, even lower than they are right now.”

“And as we know, the principle industries which hire the bulk of illegal aliens—that is construction, landscaping, leisure, hospitality—those are all industries in which wages are declining,” said Dobbs, an immigration hardliner who's now at Fox Business. “I don't hear that discussed on the Senate floor by the proponents of this amnesty legislation.”

“That's right,” Sanders said. “They have no good response.”

If I had voted in the Democratic Primary I would have voted for O'Malley.

Gadfly said...

Bullshit, and that's my last answer to you. Like PD, I'm not going to bother further.

Gadfly said...

Actually, one more comment.

Lemme see ... ignoring the link on your Blogger profile and going here: http://www.mbarrera.com/

You would seem to have a Houston-area phone number.

Per plenty of blog posts right here at Brains, I know there's plenty of contested Dem primaries in greater Houston. But, yet, you somehow, it seems, can't trouble yourself to vote in them? Not to mention statewide contested Dem races.

And, to fling your own comment back at you, in statewide GOP races, your vote for the more moderate Repug ain't worth nada.

meme said...

I voted in the Republican primary, I always vote, always. I don't have anything to hide, including my name. You can't tell who I supported in the General only that I voted. But in the R primary I voted for Simpson and Gates, no one else.

I would suspect that something hit a nerve, did I state I voted for the most moderate Republican in the General? No, I said primary but principled persons have problems admitting that their principles may make the world a more dangerous place, after all they have no God so they are the god.

But to repeat men of principle similar to you allow persons like Hitler to come into power. You have your own conscious that will either allow you to face the truth or not.

PDiddie said...

Manny, I'll address some of what you wrote above in Vol. 5 of RNU, coming shorty. Not the part when you went Godwin, blaming somebody other than Germans in the '30's for Uncle Adolph.

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