Dems Need To Learn From the UK Election to UNITE under one message: GET HIM OUT!

[bubblesort]

Oh for fuck sake, about the response I expected.

You can fuck right off with that nonsense, as can anyone else who believes it/follows it.

Anyone at all who refused to vote, voted third party or swapped their vote to Republican as a "protest" last time was not acting on a "prophecy" - they were being absolute fucking wastes of space. Find that too harsh for your wisddle bwain? Too fucking bad, it's not as harsh as you deserve.

The same thing goes for this cycle as well - doubly so actually, since we now know exactly how bad this shit can get (or at least have a damned good idea).

The time for your ideological uprising is after fuck stick is out of office and after we've managed to fix some of the shit he has broken. Not before.

This is like 2016 in at least one regard though: There are still people treating Sanders as though he is the One True Savior.

Welcome to life - it's harsh and doesn't give a flying fuck about your idealism.

LOL, sorry, man. Didn't mean to trigger you. I didn't know people were so upset about Bernie's movement surviving longer than one election cycle. It's almost like he is leading a party or something.

Hey, look on the bright side. Maybe your man Bloomberg will win the primary.

*sips a big gulp*

 

[Isabeau]

Bernie supportes are so mean...

 

[Spirits Rising]

Ah yes, so if I'm not for Bernie I must be for Bloomberg?

I am for whomever ends up being against the orange shit gibbon after the Primaries - beginning and end of it.

But hey, whatever helps you to feel important and stick it to the man.

 

[Ishina]

This is like 2016 in at least one regard though: There are still people treating Sanders as though he is the One True Savior.

Jesus would vote for Bernie Sanders.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Bernie or Bust was never meant to be a threat. It's a prophecy. People didn't take the prophecy seriously in 2016, and we got Trump because of it. If you really don't like Trump, maybe it's time to start taking it seriously?



Bernie already is the legitimate leader of the Democratic party. Bernie is the only one packing massive stadiums. In a democracy, that is how you get power. By speaking to people. Used to be, you got power by purchasing coverage from news outlets like CNN, and selling primaries to companies like Shadow. That's not actual leadership, and it's not even an effective method for maintaining power any more. It's just rank corruption, done by idiots who are too stuck in their ways to realize the world has changed. The transactional, neoliberal levers of power are crumbling on a global scale right now. I think it's mostly happening because the internet lets us all talk directly to each other, instead of using traditional gatekeepers. I mean... yeah, Zuckerberg is kinda a new media gate keeper, but do you think he really controls content on facebook as tightly as a CNN producer selling positive coverage to African dictators? I don't.

Bernie won leadership of the party when Hillary stole the primary in 2016, and then lost to Trump in the general. Now, there are a few old guard neoliberals like Biden, who are trying to take leadership away from Bernie, but they are tilting at windmills. Only racists and oligarchs want to sacrifice power in order to follow Clinton's ancient, superstitious, neoliberal religion of "everything is a market".

The party will survive neoliberalism, though. The democrats are the oldest party in the country, and we've been through worse than this before. Deriding Bernie's new direction for being populist is like Romans deriding the populist barbarians, after Rome's walls have been breeched and the city is on fire. You can only screw over the working class so long before things start to break down, and a new order emerges.

Whatever else Bernie Sanders is, he's not even a member of the Democratic Party, let alone its leader, legitimate or otherwise.

You might think he should lead the Democratic Party, but you know perfectly well that he does not hold that office.

If you're serious about gaining political power in a democracy, you need a political party behind you, and certainly if you're any sort of socialist you do -- that's inherent in the idea of socialism.

If you were serious about implementing democratic socialist policies, you'd be trying to influence and control the Democratic Party's policy-making bodies, but you're clearly not interested in that -- you're apparently more interested in charismatic populist leaders with left-wing policies who can fill stadiums, and who derive their authority by articulating the will of the people (or at least those people who agree with them) rather than by articulating the left-wing policies the party they lead has arrived at through the party's internal democratic decision-making process.

Sorry, but as far as I'm concerned, you're a left-wing populist rather than any sort of socialist, which the history of politics in the C20th suggests is a very dangerous thing to be and which, as far as any sort of socialist analysis is concerned, I'm afraid makes you very much part of the problem rather than the solution, since when left-wing populism fails to gain power, or when it gains power but cannot implement its policies, it tends to move very rapidly and easily to the radical populist right.

That's what worries me about Sanders' supporters, if not the man himself.

 

[Isabeau]

Genuine question as an outsider to US. Why do people often bring up that Sanders wasn't part of the dem party as if that makes much diffence? It's a basically a two-party system so how exactly is anyone who doesn't feel like they are represented in either able to compete? If you aren't a dem or rep no one (or hardly) will vote for you because you will be blamed for taking votes from the "least evil" choice, so you have to latch on to one of the two parties, no? What am I missing in this argument?

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Genuine question as an outsider to US. Why do people often bring up that Sanders wasn't part of the dem party as if that makes much diffence? It's a basically a two-party system so how exactly is anyone who doesn't feel like they are represented in either able to compete? If you aren't a dem or rep no one (or hardly) will vote for you because you will be blamed for taking votes from the "least evil" choice, so you have to latch on to one of the two parties, no? What am I missing in this argument?

I bring it up because the way it works in most places, parties are coalitions of people with broadly similar political views, working together to win elections at all levels with a set of policies agreed through the party's policy-making structures.

The Democratic Party doesn't seem to work that way, though, which is presumably why, in most places, Sanders and Warren, on the one hand, and, on the other, Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar and Bloomfield would be in different parties.

 

[Spirits Rising]

Jesus would vote for Bernie Sanders.

For once, I'll respond: Who any particular religious figure would vote for ... is absolutely irrelevant.

The meaning of that quoted bit of my post should have been crystal clear but i'll spell it out: There were people then and are people now that treat Sanders like he is some sort of Messiah.

 

[Pamela]

I bring it up because the way it works in most places, parties are coalitions of people with broadly similar political views, working together to win elections at all levels with a set of policies agreed through the party's policy-making structures.

The Democratic Party doesn't seem to work that way, though, which is presumably why, in most places, Sanders and Warren, on the one hand, and, on the other, Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar and Bloomfield would be in different parties.

Everything has morphed. The two parties now are actually 1. Trump and 2. The rest of us who loath Trump, which includes everyone from socialists to former Republicans. So we are very broad, and it looks like too broad to unite in support for anyone.

If 20% of all true believers on either pole refuse to vote against Trump because they don’t like the Dem ticket, we are done, as a party, as a nation, as a planet.

 

[Ishina]

For once, I'll respond: Who any particular religious figure would vote for ... is absolutely irrelevant.

The meaning of that quoted bit of my post should have been crystal clear but i'll spell it out: There were people then and are people now that treat Sanders like he is some sort of Messiah.

Are you sure they don't just really really like him and you're being a bit of a drama queen about it?

 

[Spirits Rising]

If they "just really like him" then they ought to choose their words far more carefully.

 

[Ishina]

I think the support Sanders is getting now is exactly the right kind of support to go against Trump in the general. And whether they would admit it or not, most Dem nominees would kill for some of that kind of support.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

Ah yes, so if I'm not for Bernie I must be for Bloomberg?

You know, I get the same shit from Trumpsters I encounter: "oh, if you don't support Trump, you must be a Hillary supporter!"

 

[Isabeau]

''You hate Bloomberg? So you're just going to throw away your vote?'' Um, what?

''You like Sanders? Are you a Bernie Bro? Some of them are mean I hear...'' Um, I kind of like Warren to be honest.

''The social-dems are ruining the party with in-fighting! We're all gonna die! And it will be your fault!''
As opposed to the right-of-center dems who are reasonable, able to ''weigh both sides''. It takes 2 or more to fight.

 

[bubblesort]

Genuine question as an outsider to US. Why do people often bring up that Sanders wasn't part of the dem party as if that makes much diffence? It's a basically a two-party system so how exactly is anyone who doesn't feel like they are represented in either able to compete? If you aren't a dem or rep no one (or hardly) will vote for you because you will be blamed for taking votes from the "least evil" choice, so you have to latch on to one of the two parties, no? What am I missing in this argument?

People who say he's not a democrat are just misinformed. He's been the outreach chair of the Senate Democrats for years now.

You might think he should lead the Democratic Party, but you know perfectly well that he does not hold that office.

Leadership is not an office. It's an action. If Perez wants to lead, he can show it by packing stadiums like a rock star. If he can't do that, he's not leading.

If you're serious about gaining political power in a democracy, you need a political party behind you, and certainly if you're any sort of socialist you do -- that's inherent in the idea of socialism.

If you were serious about implementing democratic socialist policies, you'd be trying to influence and control the Democratic Party's policy-making bodies, but you're clearly not interested in that -- you're apparently more interested in charismatic populist leaders with left-wing policies who can fill stadiums, and who derive their authority by articulating the will of the people (or at least those people who agree with them) rather than by articulating the left-wing policies the party they lead has arrived at through the party's internal democratic decision-making process.

Sorry, but as far as I'm concerned, you're a left-wing populist rather than any sort of socialist which the history of politics in the C20th suggests is a very dangerous thing to be and which, as far as any sort of socialist analysis is concerned, I'm afraid makes you very much part of the problem rather than the solution, since when left-wing populism fails to gain power, or when it gains power but cannot implement its policies, it tends to move very rapidly and easily to the radical populist right.

That's what worries me about Sanders' supporters, if not the man himself.

You are making a lot of assumptions about my relationship with the democratic party. I towed the party line in my ward during many election cycles, in the middle of a very red county, as local democratic committee person, which is an office I was elected to and held for 14 years. I might not be as active as I used to be, but I'm not just sitting in an armchair, watching CNN and posting about it on the internet, either.

You might be shocked to learn that most people of the political class do not read the party platform document, nor do they care about it. In my experience, that is just how it is on the local, state and national level. Ignoring the platform that was hammered out through endless meetings is just business as usual. People get positions on the platform committee as a part of political horse trading, more than as a job of serious responsibility. Republicans do it the same way.

It's dangerous to say that we don't want to let people die for private health care industry profits? Or that people should be able to get out of student debt by declaring bankruptcy easier than they can get out of debt for their car or mortgage using the same procedure?

I guess I'm dangerous then.

 

[Beebo Brink]

The two parties now are actually 1. Trump and 2. The rest of us who loath Trump, which includes everyone from socialists to former Republicans. So we are very broad, and it looks like too broad to unite in support for anyone.

We're in this mess because the Republican party shifted so far to the right that large numbers of moderate Republicans were basically left without a party, or moved over to the Democratic party and then started trying to make us into the moderate wing of the Republican-Party-that-used-to-be.

The sheer size of the "not-Trump" group is too broad for any single party umbrella to cover. It can't possibly serve as a motivator for party cohesion because it's not about unity and focus on shared principles and values, it's simply about rejecting a narrow extremist position held by a reviled madman. And therein lies the vulnerability that despots like Trump can exploit; the opposition is so large that it's almost impossible to unite them around a candidate who must be more than just a Not-Trump president. That candidate must also stand for things, and once they do that, there will be people who don't want that.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

People who say he's not a democrat are just misinformed. He's been the outreach chair of the Senate Democrats for years now.



Leadership is not an office. It's an action. If Perez wants to lead, he can show it by packing stadiums like a rock star. If he can't do that, he's not leading.



You are making a lot of assumptions about my relationship with the democratic party. I towed the party line in my ward during many election cycles, in the middle of a very red county, as local democratic committee person, which is an office I was elected to and held for 14 years. I might not be as active as I used to be, but I'm not just sitting in an armchair, watching CNN and posting about it on the internet, either.

You might be shocked to learn that most people of the political class do not read the party platform document, nor do they care about it. In my experience, that is just how it is on the local, state and national level. Ignoring the platform that was hammered out through endless meetings is just business as usual. People get positions on the platform committee as a part of political horse trading, more than as a job of serious responsibility. Republicans do it the same way.

It's dangerous to say that we don't want to let people die for private health care industry profits? Or that people should be able to get out of student debt by declaring bankruptcy easier than they can get out of debt for their car or mortgage using the same procedure?

I guess I'm dangerous then.

No, it's dangerous to be a left-wing populist with no firm party or ideological framework, just following the orator who offers radical solutions to cheering crowds because, if and when the orator gains power and can't deliver, or can't gain power in the first place, the next stop for many of the frustrated populists is with the far right.

That's true historically, and it's true today with the "third position" fascists.

 

[bubblesort]

No, it's dangerous to be a left-wing populist with no firm party or ideological framework, just following the orator who offers radical solutions to cheering crowds because, if and when the orator gains power and can't deliver, or can't gain power in the first place, the next stop for many of the frustrated populists is with the far right.

That's true historically, and it's true today with the "third position" fascists.

I think we might be misunderstanding each other. What does the word "populist" mean to you?

What is an example of a current presidential candidate who is not populist?

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I think we might be misunderstanding each other. What does the word "populist" mean to you?

What is an example of a current presidential candidate who is not populist?

In this case, "populist" means to me someone who thinks a politician's legitimacy and authority derives from his articulating the unmediated will of the people, as evidenced by his "packing massive stadiums" rather than his leading a democratic political party, and who dismisses opposition to that politician as mere examples of corruption and undue influence by vested interests.

It's not Bernie Sanders I think is a left-wing populist, it's you, so I don't see the point of the second question. The only consciously populist candidate or potential candidate in this election, at least so far, is Trump.

 

[Ishina]

If you were serious about implementing democratic socialist policies, you'd be trying to influence and control the Democratic Party's policy-making bodies, but you're clearly not interested in that -- you're apparently more interested in charismatic populist leaders with left-wing policies who can fill stadiums, and who derive their authority by articulating the will of the people (or at least those people who agree with them) rather than by articulating the left-wing policies the party they lead has arrived at through the party's internal democratic decision-making process.

Come on. You say this as though he is just some Johnny-come-lately who will burn bright but short. It's Bernie Sanders. A seasoned veteran policy maker. He's been getting shit done for decades, to no fanfare. Now he's drawing crowds, suddenly he's all show no substance and his support is just shallow noise.

If Sanders runs as anything other than Democrat, he and his supporters will be called traitors. Divisive vote stealers. "Why Trump won." And so on.