[Megathread] Bernie Sanders 2016

[Shadowferal]

Well... that's not exactly accurate.. You ignoring the super delegates

Because they're not pledged.
Only Clinton supporters count them in because they want to make her seem unstoppable.

And if she loses the popular vote, they will switch.

[Targis]

Not sure if you understood him correct.
Firstly, not every scientist that works for big business is automatically a sellout. As much as not every scientist that isn't employed by business is automatically more credible/honest. Bad apples exist everywhere.
Secondly, we need the private sector to finance science along with governmental sponsorship.
Neither is alone ideal.
A primarily government financed science field is subject to misuse by the government.
Same is to be said about science only sponsored by business.
It's a hand in hand operation that ensures the best progress.

Skroe expresses concern, that Bernie's ideas would possibly come with harmful side effects. And that might be true, if we talk about companies that aren't exclusively in the money business.

I understood him correctly and the example was just an example. Of course there are scientists who work for companies that have the goal of improving civilization, but that wasn't what he was addressing in that post. I think he was trying to make the point that corporations are more competent than government, which is not always true.

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Because what ' educated intellectuals' tend to preach about apocryphal 'big business' from their seminar pulpits =/= reality, as anyone who's actually held a white collar job will probably tell you.

I've heard those white collar workers say that CEOs absolutely deserve to make 350 times what they pay their workers otherwise those CEOs would just do something else. I think ridiculous statements like this are why I distrust what the white collars have to say. It would go against their best interests to say otherwise.

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Because they're not pledged.
Only Clinton supporters count them in because they want to make her seem unstoppable.

And if she loses the popular vote, they will switch.

I'm not sure that is the case. She's been paying for this election since she lost the last one and everybody in the democratic party knows it. That's why nobody else bothered to run against her. Of course some will switch, but she will be forced on us no matter how much we protest. The republican party couldn't be bothered to find a competent opponent I guess.

[Shadowferal]

I'm not sure that is the case. She's been paying for this election since she lost the last one and everybody in the democratic party knows it. That's why nobody else bothered to run against her. Of course some will switch, but she will be forced on us no matter how much we protest. The republican party couldn't be bothered to find a competent opponent I guess.

I kind of agree with you...

And if Sanders wins the popular vote by just a couple of hundred votes...if the super-delegates vote against "the will of the people" by going against the majority to get her in...what will that say about the uselessness of voting to begin with? There'd be hell to pay.

[ringpriest]

You do realise Hillary is widely perceived to say almost anything to get the votes and then use some arcane excuse such as bureaucratic resistance or perhaps special interests to then cop out right?

Of course - by "keep her honest" I mean, for example, things like: forcing her to hold non-sellout positions long enough that it'll look worse when she changes, pushing parts of the Sanders agenda into the actual party platform (probably the best thing he can do at this point, really), and/or saddling her with a truly liberal VP. These are small changes compares to actually electing progressives, but they're what we can get short of burning it all down. And for all the status quo's many, many flaws (and the sad likelihood that it will burn itself down in the not too distant future), I've no personal desire to see it burn, and I will be voting for Hillary over the ignorant fascist slathered in cheap gold paint. (If Trump is, in fact, some sort of deep plant to get Clinton elected, it's working.)

The Hunger Games character Alma Coin, played by Julianne Moore in the films, is largely meant to be an allegory to her. She shares that same lust for power Clinton does. As for something catastrophic you could have suggested something more realistic such as getting indicted for a certain misdemeanour she committed.

I'm fairly confident that indictment is not happening at this point - while Obama has stopped just shy of an endorsement, he's publicly called for Democrats to support Clinton; the grounds for one have always been much shakier than those who despise Clinton believe, and with Obama's open backing, I really doubt his Justice Dept (which has declined to pursue high-ranking figures in government and industry who have done much worse) is going to go after the presumptive Democratic nominee (worst case, a bunch of FBI or other intelligence agency insiders publicly denounce her - which will be a nasty fight, but her campaign is going to be a nasty fight regardless).

[Annoying]

I'm not sure that is the case. She's been paying for this election since she lost the last one and everybody in the democratic party knows it. That's why nobody else bothered to run against her. Of course some will switch, but she will be forced on us no matter how much we protest. The republican party couldn't be bothered to find a competent opponent I guess.

Bingo. “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” - Wasserman Schultz, DNC chair.

[Deleted]

- Wasserman Schultz, DNC chair.

- Wasserman Schultz, Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign co-chair.

But hey, there's no favoritism on her part, I'm sure.

[ringpriest]

The thing is, I'm not quite sure what tangible results come from "influencing things at the convention". Have influence over some party statement of principles? Hillary Clinton will just lie through her teeth. And that's not a Hillary thing. That's a basic survival thing. You don't go into a hostile audience and tell them they're wrong, if you want their support. And besides, keep in mind the most likely structure of things post end-of-Primary season (and pre-convention mind you) is that Hillary Clinton moves towards the center, big time, to try and appeal to conservatives who are disgusted with Trump and Republicans (like me), independents and moderates. Meanwhile her left flank will be covered by Barack Obama, who intends to campaign very hard this summer and fall, and since he isn't exactly a popular person with the center-right or various parts of the country Clinton would like to wind, I anticipate him putting on his old 2008 Primary "Senator Obama, liberal warrior" Halloween Costume. And furthermore, if I can just speculate here for a moment, Hillary's VP is almost certainly going to be a liberal "future of the Democratic party" figure, not another 60+ year older. Likely Hispanic or interracial.

So putting all this together, whats the most tangible thing sanders gets for his trouble? A voice in choosing the VP? That's what's really missing for me in that reasoning. He want's influence, but it's like we all have amnesia about how politics works. There is absolutely nothing to indicate anything he can do short of demanding to be Clinton's chief of staff (which won't happen) to say that the recent bout of left-aligned politics Sanders has brought about among Democrats will persist into the General election, let alone her administration. Of course, I could be wrong. You give me the glaringly obvious "win" he gets, keeping in mind how efficient and ruthless the Clintons are at managing their power base, that i'm overlooking, and I'll change my tune on him staying in. But I simply don't buy any kind of "moral victory" argument.

If Sanders would really want to do something lasting, he would focus on getting liberal democrats into the House and Senate so that his liberal successor, a decade or more from now, will have the Congress he needs to pass a liberal policy agenda. But with Democratic rule in statehouses having cataclysmic-ally collapsed since 2010, the next real opportunity to effect large scale change is after the 2020 census and redistricting. This goes back to the very first thing I said about Bernie sanders, last August or something: that he's the candidate that liberals should want at the end of the process of remaking government, not the start. Obama's first two years and landslide election came on the other end of nearly a decade and a half of Democrats trying to reverse the disaster of 1994, recover from 2000, and with of course, the assist of a deeply unpopular Republican President and a largely discredited Republican party, admits a financial crisis.

Half of everything is timing right? Obama's timing in 2008 couldn't have been better. Sanders has no timing to help him in 2016. Hell, even Hillary would be in greater jeopardy (perhaps) if Donald Trump hadn't demolished the 2016 Republican field (although the electoral votes map for Republicans is just very hard no matter what).

But I mean, we're going for two separate things. Hillary will govern as a more conservative version of Obama on Foreign Policy, and mostly where Obama is most other places. But it'll be status quo unless those things are important to you. And very far from that revolution Sanders irresponsibly advocates for.

I think Sanders' call for revolution (not that we're likely to actually get one) is not simply responsible, but necessary - the US is building itself a bonfire, while showering in petrol and smoking; either we get a peaceful revolution, or we get violence and chaos. (Look at Trump and his supporters - that is the future of all US politics if governance doesn't start moving left domestically.)

Sander's campaign is certainly not an ideal way to drag the Dems left, but its the one available right now - in the long term, yes, there needs to be (but likely will not be) a sustained and organized movement, inside or outside the party; and yes, that's hard because Americans in general don't really organize in that fashion in the 21st Century. What the left needs is a distributed, organic organization, one that can't depend on individual leaders who can abandon it or co-opt it, but that still manages to function effectively (aka. a political party ). Will we get that out of Bernie's campaign? I rather doubt it (although if Hillary scorns the Sanders supporters in favor of chasing moderate/sane Republicans, it would help...). Such an organization needs to start with state legislatures and state offices now, to have a shot at influencing things in 2020.

But again, short of that, we work with what we have, and what we have is the Democratic Socialist Senator from Vermont running for President; if the result of Bernie's campaign is a liberal VP who refuses to shut up, some of Bernie's planks in the Democratic Party Platform, or live memes in the Dem's ideology that's not a moral victory, it's a real victory (its also only a battle, and not the war). (I'm certainly not suggesting Sanders as Clinton's VP, but rather forcing her to select a more-or-less actual liberal VP, rather than a minority establishment figure - I'm going to skip listing possibilities, because that's a whole post on its own.)

The Democratic party is more left-leaning than the Clintons or Obama - a floor fight, convention speeches, and actual planks in the platform can provide real tinder for more liberal Democratic politicians in future elections. But whether the end result is some influence on the future of the Dems, or enough impetus and anger on the far left to get them organized against the neo-libs of the DLC, those appear to be the only options that exist right now, short of giving up and going with the flow, or just walking out and washing their hands of it all.

Ultimately, thanks to Trump, this is looking like a good year for Clinton and a weak year for the progressive left - her left flank is covered, not by Obama's increasingly threadbare 'liberal warrior' costume, but by Trump's sheer awfulness. Clinton can simultaneously run for the middle successfully (something that would be more difficult vs. a 'moderate' Republican) and take much of the more liberal vote for granted, no matter what she does, because 'stay home', or 'vote 3rd party' is a much tougher sell when then alternative is a ignorant and incompetent, psychopathic blob of dyed suet.

[Daerio]

Bingo. “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” - Wasserman Schultz, DNC chair.

The scary part is how many people believe this line of thought is legitimate.

And that we don't really NEED a candidate that people want to vote for, we just need the DNC to tell us who the candidate is, because obviously they know best.

Oh, and having a candidate to vote for isn't really part of the election process, it's private party business. ^_^

[Matchles]

- Wasserman Schultz, Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign co-chair.

But hey, there's no favoritism on her part, I'm sure.

One of about 20 co-chairs. And one that had a falling out with Clinton over DWS secretly reaching out to Obama when he started winning and pledging her support while still in the Clinton campaign. But despite the bad blood, I'm sure they must be pulling an unprecedented coordinated effort to stop a Sanders campaign that is more than 2 million votes behind this primary.

[ringpriest]

One of about 20 co-chairs. And one that had a falling out with Clinton over DWS secretly reaching out to Obama when he started winning and pledging her support while still in the Clinton campaign. But despite the bad blood, I'm sure they must be pulling an unprecedented coordinated effort to stop a Sanders campaign that is more than 2 million votes behind this primary.

Why would she need to? Clinton, as the "Dem establishment" candidate already has many built-in advantages, including the aforementioned superdelegates, but also including the primary schedule and media coverage:

[Pterodactylus]

Because they're not pledged.
Only Clinton supporters count them in because they want to make her seem unstoppable.

And if she loses the popular vote, they will switch.

Millions more people have voted for Clinton at this stage than Sanders. Polling of upcoming contests (baring Washington) shows that trend will continue.

[Matchles]

Why would she need to? Clinton, as the "Dem establishment" candidate already has many built-in advantages, including the aforementioned superdelegates, but also including the primary schedule and media coverage:

And how much of that "free media" is trashing Clinton over emails and Benghazi? Screen time isn't necessarily good news for the candidates.

[Annoying]

Millions more people have voted for Clinton at this stage than Sanders. Polling of upcoming contests (baring Washington) shows that trend will continue.

2,552,265 more, just in case someone wants to know the official number.

[Daerio]

Millions more people have voted for Clinton at this stage than Sanders. Polling of upcoming contests (baring Washington) shows that trend will continue.

Voter suppression is rampant, another Republican tactic being used by Hilary.

Votes are being taken in Arizona and due to a "database oddity" are being thrown out because the voters are marked as being no affiliation, even though they've been registered democrats for years. Polling places reduced to a fraction of what they were 4 years ago so it takes hours of standing in line to vote. Lower voter turnout on election day favors Hilary; early voting favors Hilary. (I'm not sure how early votes are allowed to be cast in this fashion, but it's not a good process) Arizona primary voting officials telling people to go home because the polls are closing and the lines are outrageous - but that's not voter disenfranchisement at all.

It's usually not about statistics, it's about how those statistics are arrived at and what they really mean that matters.

Here's a video of exactly what they're doing to throw away votes they don't want to count. One way of many they've been using in this primary.

Thousands of people standing in lines for hours to vote, being told they're not allowed to vote in the primary. You don't think Americans are noticing what's going on? It's a slap in the face.

Talking about delegates counted in a rigged election is like talking about health insurance enrollment during our current health care crisis. It's smoke and bullshit.

[triplesdsu]

2,552,265 more, just in case someone wants to know the official number.

Well if Bernie can just find a way to make it illegal for minorities to vote, he might have a chance. Seriously, this guy only does well in small, white states that have caucauses where less than 100k people vote but super delegates are somehow depriving the will of the people. He made up like a dozen delegates on Tuesday on a day where Hillary got like 200k more votes overall.

[BrerBear]

And how much of that "free media" is trashing Clinton over emails and Benghazi? Screen time isn't necessarily good news for the candidates.

Much of it, if we read the same source.
Also, it pretty much demolishes the oft-touted notion of a Bernie media blackout.

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Voter suppression is rampant, another Republican tactic being used by Hilary.

What does Hillary have to do with any of your accusations? Even the DNC doesn't control Arizona polling.
Voter suppression maybe, but not from who you accuse.

[Daerio]

What does Hillary have to do with any of your accusations? Even the DNC doesn't control Arizona polling.
Voter suppression maybe, but not from who you accuse.

If I pay for a hitman, I'm still guilty of murder.

[Pterodactylus]

Voter suppression is rampant, another Republican tactic being used by Hilary.

Votes are being taken in Arizona and due to a "database oddity" are being thrown out because the voters are marked as being no affiliation, even though they've been registered democrats for years. Polling places reduced to a fraction of what they were 4 years ago so it takes hours of standing in line to vote. Lower voter turnout on election day favors Hilary; early voting favors Hilary. (I'm not sure how early votes are allowed to be cast in this fashion, but it's not a good process) Arizona primary voting officials telling people to go home because the polls are closing and the lines are outrageous - but that's not voter disenfranchisement at all.

It's usually not about statistics, it's about how those statistics are arrived at and what they really mean that matters.

Here's a video of exactly what they're doing to throw away votes they don't want to count. One way of many they've been using in this primary.

Thousands of people standing in lines for hours to vote, being told they're not allowed to vote in the primary. You don't think Americans are noticing what's going on? It's a slap in the face.

Talking about delegates counted in a rigged election is like talking about health insurance enrollment during our current health care crisis. It's smoke and bullshit.

Tell me how Hillary is responsible of what the Secretary of State of Arizona does? This is a result of the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, and should be evidence of how important the Supreme Court nomination is this election cycle.

[infinitemeridian]

Voter suppression is rampant, another Republican tactic being used by Hilary.

Votes are being taken in Arizona and due to a "database oddity" are being thrown out because the voters are marked as being no affiliation, even though they've been registered democrats for years. Polling places reduced to a fraction of what they were 4 years ago so it takes hours of standing in line to vote. Lower voter turnout on election day favors Hilary; early voting favors Hilary. (I'm not sure how early votes are allowed to be cast in this fashion, but it's not a good process) Arizona primary voting officials telling people to go home because the polls are closing and the lines are outrageous - but that's not voter disenfranchisement at all.

It's usually not about statistics, it's about how those statistics are arrived at and what they really mean that matters.

Here's a video of exactly what they're doing to throw away votes they don't want to count. One way of many they've been using in this primary.

Thousands of people standing in lines for hours to vote, being told they're not allowed to vote in the primary. You don't think Americans are noticing what's going on? It's a slap in the face.

Talking about delegates counted in a rigged election is like talking about health insurance enrollment during our current health care crisis. It's smoke and bullshit.

You really think Hillary had any influence on how the Arizona primary turned out? Arizona is a pretty red state, you think they would WANT Hillary to win?

Besides, the DNC only manages caucases, not primaries, which are done by the state.

[Pterodactylus]

2,552,265 more, just in case someone wants to know the official number.

As I said, millions.

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If I pay for a hitman, I'm still guilty of murder.

Where is your evidence that Hillary "hired a hit-man" to suppress the vote?