Il Douché and His Discontents: The 2016 Primary Voting Thread, Part 4

if hillary hadn't had the superdelegate lead all along, bernie might have had more momentum, and the race might be even more competitive. maybe not, but still, why does this bother you?

xp frederik

yeah I'm not understanding Frederik's agitation about everything.

The cringeworthyness I was talking about upthread is when the Sanders twitter feed tweets something like this: 'Tonight proved once again that we are well on our way towards winning this Democratic primary. Thank you, Maine!'

I get it, I get why a campaign tweets something like that, but it's still embarrassing. They know it's untrue, and we know they know it's untrue, and they know we know they know it's untrue, and still.

― Frederik B, Monday, March 7, 2016 6:16 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

clinton's camp and her propagandists do some of the exact same stuff man. it's just the way of the world. maybe just give it a fuckin rest?

Oh, I just use it as an example of something 'cringeworthy'. The cherry picking of data, stuff like that. Saying Clinton does the same is true, of course, but it misses my point completely. I'm not saying Sanders is bad, that his campaign is bad. I'm saying that because he is losing the spin becomes more and more cringeworthy.

I'm not entirely convinced that the superdelegates are really having such an impact on the race. Right now Clinton has a larger proportionate lead over Sanders for pledged delegates than Trump has over Cruz. That lead has increased as more states have voted. It is not too late for Sanders to come back, but so far he has only fallen further behind.

I guess you could say he is losing. I think he has been a wildly successful protest candidate whose run has strengthened the democratic party by pushing them to me more responsive to voter concerns. Just look at the kinds of questions that are in play now regarding campaign finance, public college tuition, free trade deals etc.

Yes, Treeship, you're right. But he IS losing the delegate count. Is that better?

It just seems like your "cringeworthy" critique is so detached from anything that matters

Like, he obviously can't go out there and say "we have no shot" without tanking his campaign. Tanking his campaign will cut short his opportunity to advocate for the things he thinks are important -- things the democratic party have not prioritized for decades.

^^^

And also that at least 40% of the electorate cares about. As Hillary said, he is kind of a one issue candidate. His big issue is economic inequality, and it's so important to people that they've come out to vote for him in droves (not to mention how many people donated to the campaign!) Why fold at this point, or even gesture toward doing that?

also he said what DJP posted

which is a pretty weird thing to say

since everyone is too busy explaining how American politics works to a Scandinavian to talk about actual candidate responses to questions about racism, I looked up my own answer:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/07/bernie-sanders-says-white-people-dont-know-what-its-like-to-live-in-a-ghetto-about-that/

which can also be considered cringeworthy

http://iquantny.tumblr.com/post/140615860419/trumps-unpaid-bills-a-closer-look-at-the-441

bernie should stay in at least till hillz selects professor warren as her running mate, because fuck rich people

^

that would be a fierce ticket, and would pull along Bernie's base, but Warren would have more impact remaining in the Senate imo.

since everyone is too busy explaining how American politics works to a Scandinavian to talk about actual candidate responses to questions about racism, I looked up my own answer:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/07/bernie-sanders-says-white-people-dont-know-what-its-like-to-live-in-a-ghetto-about-that/

― i like to trump and i am crazy (DJP), Monday, March 7, 2016 10:38 AM (37 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is good.

"I'm not saying Sanders is bad, that his campaign is bad. I'm saying that because he is losing the spin becomes more and more cringeworthy."

I don't think you understand what a good or bad campaign is. Sanders is obv not going to win, but I don't think it's because he's campaign hasn't been run well.

Re. Sanders answer to the question of racial blind spots, his use of the term "ghetto" was ill advised but I don't think his general point was racist or something. He was saying that unless you have lived on the other end of a nation built on inequality, you'll never fully understand what it's like. His platform for addressing inequality is at least as good as clinton's imo. It's uncomfortable for an old man to make an uncomfortable statement like that but im not sure its a cause for concern, would be interested in hearing other perspectives

well, among other things, it kind of reinforces the idea that Sanders has a less-than-nuanced view of the relationship between race and economic class in America

Charles Pierce, who after admitting that neither candidate answered the question well, writes:

Afterwards, and not entirely fairly, Sanders was accused of comparing getting a cab with losing a child to police violence, and for not knowing that white people live in poverty, too. (I mean, come on. The man grew up in Brooklyn and he got his start in politics doing open-housing campaigns in Chicago. Not only does he know that poverty transcends race, he also knows how easily the latter can be used as a way to make sure not much gets done about the former.)

Not sure I agree wholeheartedly.

what I cringed at was that he continues to collapse the question about racial relations in the US to, essentially, the problems of poor, urban African-Americans. I really expected his shpiel to have evolved on this from earlier debates. This suggests that his advisors share the same blind spot.

I didn't love the use of "ghetto" but I'm not sure I prefer the euphemistic "inner city." I would have been fine with either term, however, if his fundamental approach to the matter had expanded.

The Sanders comment sent my mind back to where this thread was on Friday:

Accelerationism and dark enlightenment claptrap are the retreats of people who think their material circumstances wouldn't be much worse in a collapse scenario, i.e. white men.

― petulant dick master (silby), Friday, March 4, 2016 6:49 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i say the same thing about folks who argue that there's no or little difference between the parties. -- these aren't people who are dependent on medicaid and so forth.

― wizzz! (amateurist), Friday, March 4, 2016 9:50 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that said, you're stereotyping -- plenty of white men experience precarity. in fact the fallacy that those utilizing the safety net (the one the likes of rubio and cruz would tear to shreads) are largely minorities plays into the racist fears of reactionaries...

― wizzz! (amateurist), Friday, March 4, 2016 9:51 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Meanwhile Rubio announces his advisory council!. Elliott Abrams!

A casual observer could be forgiven for experiencing some rhetorical whiplash if there is really an argument along the lines of, "Bernie Sanders does not care about [the precarity of] white people."

xp I wonder, at the same time, if Sanders' use of the term "ghetto" represents an attempt (perhaps unconscious) to identify with African-Americans in some way. We're talking about the child of Polish Jews, after all.

https://twitter.com/NRA/status/706859878703177728

oh goody

his use of the term "ghetto" was ill advised

Perhaps, given how voters might perceive it, but to someone whose ancestors were both Polish and Jewish, the term "ghetto" has very clear connotations, as an urban enclave you cannot move out of because it is forbidden to live outside it, where living conditions are notoriously crowded and impoverished. With the US history of placing covenants in deeds forbidding the sale of the house to blacks or Asians, and bank redlining, and Jim Crow, and other apartheid-style racial policies, you have to admit that the European term "ghetto" has plenty of similarity to US housing practices.

Newt angles for VP: http://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-gop-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/03/newt-romney-speech-vitriolic-and-nasty-220358

jfc

Newt Gingrich ✔ ‎@newtgingrich
Trump's shift toward inclusiveness, team effort and unity was vitally important He has to build a Reagan like inclusiveness to win this fall

racism sucks. so does classism (and sexism). they're not unrelated features of a divisive unequal and inefficient system and it would be nice to talk about them all as such. and fuck rich people

Re. Sanders answer to the question of racial blind spots, his use of the term "ghetto" was ill advised but I don't think his general point was racist or something. He was saying that unless you have lived on the other end of a nation built on inequality, you'll never fully understand what it's like. His platform for addressing inequality is at least as good as clinton's imo. It's uncomfortable for an old man to make an uncomfortable statement like that but im not sure its a cause for concern, would be interested in hearing other perspectives

― Treeship, Monday, March 7, 2016 10:22 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

p sure DJP is giving you another perspective

Yeah, that Janell Ross post is quite well-taken.

don't think DJP actually has offered a perspective!

i thought that pierce take was good. a somewhat clumsy answer but hardly ignorant or offensive

I wish Graydon Carter were American-born so he could be the Democratic running mate

Can totally see the GOP pushing an establishment running mate, to be followed by pushing Trump to take flying lessons.

It's uncomfortable for an old man to make an uncomfortable statement like that but im not sure its a cause for concern, would be interested in hearing other perspectives

If by "cause for concern" you mean whether Sanders is racist, then no, I'm not concerned.

from the transcript:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/06/the-democrats-debate-in-flint-mich-annotated/

...I was with young people active in the Black Lives Matter movement. A young lady comes up to me and she says, you don't understand what police do in certain black communities. You don't understand the degree to which we are terrorized, and I'm not just talking about the horrible shootings that we have seen, which have got to end and we've got to hold police officers accountable, I'm just talking about every day activities where police officers are bullying people.

So to answer your question, I would say, and I think it's similar to what the secretary said, when you're white, you don't know what it's like to be living in a ghetto. You don't know what it's like to be poor. You don't know what it's like to be hassled when you walk down the street or you get dragged out of a car.

And I believe that as a nation in the year 2016, we must be firm in making it clear. We will end institutional racism and reform a broken criminal justice system.

From the piece I posted upthread:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/07/bernie-sanders-says-white-people-dont-know-what-its-like-to-live-in-a-ghetto-about-that/

Additionally, more than 70 percent of black Americans are not poor, and some share of these people have never lived in a ghetto either. Yet black Americans are more likely to live in a neighborhood with lower-quality public facilities (think parks, libraries, schools, stores, etc.) than white Americans with less income. This pattern points directly to the continued existence of housing discrimination, and it's many forms, but we digress.

Also true: Black Americans up and down the income and education scale are far more likely than white Americans to experience some form of hostile, unethical, inappropriate or illegal contact with the police. So the other part of Sanders's answer, the part when he implied that some person told him that black people are mistreated by police only in certain neighborhoods; well, that's also false.

Like stories about race-related taxi pass-bys, if we wanted to, we could collect 100 such personal tales from black Americans who have been middle class or more all their lives in a single hour tonight. That's the thing about policing that differs according to the color of a person's skin. That's an immutable part of one's appearance. And it's skin color that shapes who gets stopped by the police most often and what happens once such a stop occurs. It is not one's income, not one's address or deportment and certainly not one's outfit. It is skin color and the links that some officers believe exist between race and criminality. When police stop someone, they run a warrant check. They don't ask for or try to gauge the content of anyone's resume.

Quite frankly, that's the kind of thing that someone running for president in 2016 should be able to demonstrate that they know.

The Trump campaign has no pollster, so it is governed by public polling and what the candidate himself observes while watching cable news.

the best organization, the best, just terrific.

Putting Sanders's quote in context, as goole has, helps. If you regard the "you don't know what it's like" passage on its own, it looks like he's saying that white ppl just can't grok precarity (my new favorite word). But if you read it as an extension of the paraphrase of the Black Lives Matter voice in the previous paragraph, it makes more sense.

jesus christ wtf happened to Mary Matalin's face? She looks like Steve Strange.

http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/abf6a7ec2ef96e20ec75dbd88c471678fe49611f/c=105-0-1040-703&r=x404&c=534x401/local/-/media/2016/03/06/DetroitFreePress/DetroitFreePress/635928720168132637-Screen-Shot-2016-03-06-at-2.27.41-PM.png

@ppppolls
Marco Rubio's at 5% in the Ohio poll we'll release later today. 33/51 favorability with GOP voters

From DJP's quote:

And it's skin color that shapes who gets stopped by the police most often and what happens once such a stop occurs. It is not one's income, not one's address or deportment and certainly not one's outfit. It is skin color and the links that some officers believe exist between race and criminality. When police stop someone, they run a warrant check. They don't ask for or try to gauge the content of anyone's resume.

Quite frankly, that's the kind of thing that someone running for president in 2016 should be able to demonstrate that they know.

Did the writer of that piece not hear the anecdote Sanders told immediately before the BLM one?

SANDERS: Well, let me just very briefly tell you a story. When I was in one of my first years in Congress, I went to a meeting downtown in Washington, D.C. And I went there with another congressman, an African-American congressman. And then we kind of separated during the meeting. And then I saw him out later on. And he was sitting there waiting and I said, well, let’s go out and get a cab. How come you didn’t go out and get a cab?

He said, no, I don’t get cabs in Washington, D.C. This was 20 years ago. Because he was humiliated by the fact that cabdrivers would go past him because he was black. I couldn’t believe, you know, you just sit there and you say, this man did not take a cab 20 years ago in Washington, D.C.