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

http://www.magnetmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/OrdinaryPeople.jpg

lobbyists for the fossil fuel industry need to step up their game if they want to compete with wall street bundlers for her attention

bernie raised $44 million in march alone - $1.2 million is peanuts.

You are comparing all of the donations Bernie received for one month with the specific donations she received from one group of people working in one industry

yes, correct that is the comparison. good work!

You are responding to curmudgeon in a sarcastic matter.

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and how they make the sausage

http://ronbryn.blogspot.com/2015/05/canadian-bank-us-probed-multiple-times.html

I've decided to parse that URL as "Canadian bank: 'Us probed multiple times'"

i did that too

me probe bank one day

lol

i don't agree with sanders' assessment of the right half of the american people:

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2016/03/bernie-sanders-interesting-theory-on-gops-existence

I think if we had a media in this country that was really prepared to look at what the Republicans actually stood for rather than quoting every absurd remark of Donald Trump, talking about Republican Party, talking about hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks for the top two tenths of 1 percent, cuts to Social Security and Medicare, Medicaid, a party which with few exceptions doesn't even acknowledge the reality of climate change, let alone do anything about it, a party which is not prepared to stand with women in the fight for pay equity, a party that is not prepared to do anything about a broken criminal justice system or a corrupt campaign finance system, I think, to be honest with you—and I just don't, you know, say this rhetorically, this is a fringe party. It is a fringe party. Maybe they get 5, 10 percent of the vote.

bizarre theory imo

Maybe they get 5, 10 percent of the vote.

hahahahahahahahahahaaaaa

I believe that was meant to be in his alternate universe where the media adopts the strategy he mentions, not like an actual real-world prediction.

that is also ridiculous

I mean maybe a little less ridiculous given it's a hypothetical but still totally divorced from reality

it's almost as if he missed the last couple decades where the right-wing decided our current corporate owned media was populated by a bunch of radical leftists and retreated to the safe seas of talk radio and fox news.

The scintilla of a point I'l rescue is that he's right about corporate media leading with can-you-believe-what-Trump-said-now? twaddle...but it was ever thus.

meanwhile:

Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who has frequently praised Mr. Trump’s insurgent campaign, said the front-runner had made a series of bewildering and irrational mistakes. Mr. Trump’s campaign, he said, had failed to evolve beyond the “personal gunslinger, random-behavior model” characterized by the candidate.

“None of the mistakes have been forced and nobody forced him to react negatively,” Mr. Gingrich said. “It’s almost as though he is so full of himself that he can’t slow down and recognize that being president of the United States is a team sport that requires a stable personality, that allows other people to help him.”

Newtie obviously totally loathsome both on a personal and political level, but I admit I do find him entertaining as a public figure, just this little mercurial nutjob with a penchant for marrying completely insane positions with the occasionally legitimately insightful pithy witticism

That quote is just Sanders selling the Fundamental Decency of the American People, you nitwit literalists.

i can't help but have affection for his space nerd mode xp

ha yeah me too

Sanders selling the Fundamental Decency of the American People

fake bill of goods imo

space nerd canceled out by the black hole absorbing his brain and all notions of civility

Eh, there really is a lot of basic decency in the American people, but it is so thoroughly mixed in with racism, self-interest and ignorance that it's hard to believe all these traits can co-exist -- until you come to understand that this is How Humans Are Built. It's like the cartoon cliché of a little angel and a little devil riding on each of our shoulders, whispering contrary advice into each ear.

i.e. like every other people

yup

^^^

This is actually the least favorite thing I've ever heard from Sanders. Republicanism is popular. It's not like people who vote for it don't know what it is. They know what it is and they're voting for that, and it's not 10% of the population, it's a big chunk of the population. The reason those policies are to be fought isn't because they're unpopular, it's because they're bad.

but if only they were better educated/informed, then they would all agree with Sanders!

or me!

nyt headline:

POLITICAL MEMO
G.O.P. Fears Trump as Zombie: Damaged but Unstoppable

G.O.P. Fears Trump as Zombie: Damaged but Unstoppable

This is very unfamiliar territory for the so-called "G.O.P." Conventional wisdom among Republican bigwigs has long been that you try like hell to avoid a prolonged battle for the nomination, because your eventual nominee will have the mud from that fight still attached after the nomination. In the past few decades there has usually been an heir presumptive before the campaign even begins. This helps explain their timidity in attacking their frontrunner with sufficient gusto.

This is actually the least favorite thing I've ever heard from Sanders. Republicanism is popular. It's not like people who vote for it don't know what it is. They know what it is and they're voting for that, and it's not 10% of the population, it's a big chunk of the population. The reason those policies are to be fought isn't because they're unpopular, it's because they're bad.

At the same time, though, hasn't it been said many times, including here, that Trump has jettisoned many core Republican principles and is now the leading Republican candidate? That does suggest that 'Republicanism' per se might not be as popular as thought. (What it says about what is popular might be even darker, though, in contrast to what Sanders is saying.)

yeah, i don't think trump's popularity jibes w/ bernie's assertion. the republican party has married evangelical principles to pro-corporate / capital principles to bigotry and hate. not everyone in the tent agreed with everything and so trump has demonstrated that there's an appetite for bigotry divorced from evangelicalism (to some extent) and establishment conservative ideology. but that's doesn't mean that his voters are ready to return to the democratic party - their priority remains pro-bigotry before class interests.

Yes, I agree.

Sanders' problem there is that he implicitly accepts that people's political opinions are based on informed, rational decision-making, as opposed to tribalism. The latter is a far stronger force in determining voting patterns, and it's particularly strong in the GOP, Trump's campaign fits right into that pattern.

this is a common trap with lefties, who like to frame issues as a simple matter of determining what policies produce the greatest common good based on the facts available - but that is actually pretty divorced from the reality of how people make decisions about who to vote for. It's not simply a matter of the opposing side not being exposed to the correct sources of information, and it never has been.

"A THIRD OF THE COUNTRY ARE ALWAYS MORONS" not considered smart political rhetoric

especially since it's more like 2/3rds

Still maybe a pretty conservative percentage there.

It is always good to remember that the peak of the IQ bell curve is presumed to be 100. The average person is somewhat mediocre at sorting out all the complexities and nuances of language and logic. Put them under a lot of emotional stress and they tend to respond to it on a very basic level. Doesn't help to call them morons.

no need to get defensive

it's not like geniuses have been shown to be immune to emotional appeals and pre-existing biases. often they're better at coming up w/ post-hoc justifications tho.

it's shorthand, dawg; we mean "politically"

and i include a lot of 'educated' Democrats in my sample so i'm more optimistic than most

outic otm, maybe sanders' estimate at 5-10% would look better if a similar (or not too far-off) exercise estimated the figure of core dem voters who were fully invested in each and every stated aim of "the left" as defined by its opponents.

I hadn't heard this before (from Krugman):

it’s time for Sanders to engage in some citizenship. The presidency isn’t the only office on the line; down-ballot races for the Senate and even the House are going to be crucial. Clinton has been raising money for other races; Sanders hasn’t, and is still being evasive on whether he will ever do so. Not acceptable.

this seems like a dumb thing for Sanders not to do, don't really get what his motive is there

Priestess Maddow asked him about it.

"We'll see," Sanders said. "Right now, our focus is on winning the nomination."

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/bernie-sanders-fundraise-down-ballot-democrats-maddow

why dont you ask goldman sachs for some cash to help flesh out your campaign staff, homey

odd that he wouldn't consider that a key part of his "revolution"

xp

yeah, the political system is rigged because none of the young democrats showed up for the 2010 and 2014 house elections, not the opposite he claims all the time.

the problem is that right now is when the primaries are happening so if leftists want to primary moderate dem representatives they need to be doing it now. once bernie wins he can campaign alongside candidates that won their primaries (assuming he isn't too busy trying to win the general election) but they won't necessarily be the ppl he will need to have a political revolution. it's like bad enough that the kids don't show up to the midterm elections but they're barely showing up to this election.