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

Not to worry, everyone. They're gonna get this mess all sorted out.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/56ddbd38e4b0ffe6f8ea125d

Third google answer for "Ted Cruz is" for me: Ted Cruz is a Microdont.

Amazing

DJP, you didn't accompany the article you shared with your own comments, so why should I make any conclusions about what point you were making? I don't presume that anybody has explained anything on your behalf. All I had to go on were the excerpts you copied, and yes, I did take issue with some of Ross's readings (e.g., re the 20 year old anecdote). I do think there's lots of instances where Sanders exhibits cluelessness w/r/t race issues (and have posted about this on these primary threads). But in this case, because I focused on those points of disagreement, it came off as "Bernsplaining", I can see that.

Part of this is my fault; I had typed out something on two separate Facebook conversations and thought I'd also typed something out here. Regarding the 20 year old anecdote, while I am certain we can all agree that the question was terrible, answering "where are your blind spots with regards to race" with "20 years ago, I learned that black people have problems getting cabs" and following it up with statements filtered through your economic justice filter that turn issues that face the entire black American population into issues that only affect poor people implies that poverty is an intrinsic part of the black experience and leads to these interactions. Which, obviously, is horseshit, and should be challenged rather than handwaved.

DJP, your summary brings it together really clearly, thank you. That kinda sums up why I was leaning towards the position of the article you linked even though I at first felt similarly to some of the other posters here that in some way Sanders was being misread or taken out of context.

I do still feel like some of the coverage of this has pulled parts of his response out of context, and that the "ghetto" part was way more problematic than the comment on policing, and that it's not 100% clear that Sanders is saying that this experience of the police is exclusive to poor communities, and that his ropey taxi anecdote suggests that in his mind it's definitely not that - even Congresspersons experience racism, etc. etc. He's an old guy and his thoughts don't hang together perfectly and I think he kinda drifted from one thought to another and some parts of it fit this picture of the all-economic-justice filter more than others.

But... even with all that said, this is one spot where I think it's fair to say, let's demand something better from our dream progressive radical candidate than that a discussion of racism always means a discussion of impoverished black inner-city dwellers. (I don't want them cut out of the picture either, and it's cool that he wants to talk about their problems IMO because ever since Clinton I it's kinda just been middle-class this middle-class that.) But yeah I don't want to be in the position of saying "Oh well, he's so very very right on so many things, can't we just let this one little thing that he doesn't 'get' pass by?" Cause actually this thing is kind of a big deal. Like maybe next time we can get a candidate who when they get these questions we all go, holy fuck, Candidate OTM, rather than having to carefully parse the "got sorta in the ballpark of something great" and "totally blew it" parts of the answer.

and yeah i know i kinda waffled my way through the first couple paragraphs there. it's hard for me to let go of the impulse to defend him; i'm fond of this guy and his candidacy! but i do think the surer critical position is to demand better, not to make excuses.

great post

From a Facebook friend of a friend:

Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and share my experience at Donald Trump's rally in Warren, MI today. We'll start with why I went. I am a firm believer in being educated on ALL candidates, not just the one you're rooting for, so redacted and I decided to attend. If you know me, it's no surprise that I am not a fan of Trump due to his racist, misogynist, and popularity-searching "campaign". But I try to keep an open mind, understanding that people have different views and everyone is entitled to their own. I wore a shirt bashing Trump, and redacted wore a pro-Bernie Sanders baseball hat. We had no intentions of causing a scene, starting any fights, or even speaking negatively towards any Trump-supporters.

We stood in the crowd with everyone else, even made small talk with a few different people, asking back and forth about each other's views. A women supporting Trump even complimented our hat and shirt. This is not a post to bash all Trump-supporters. Most of the people we spoke to were very kind to us, as we were to them. Trump came out and started his speech. As hard as it was, we ignored the screams and chants of building walls and exporting citizens. We stood quietly and listened to the man speak. Every 15 or so minutes, a scene would happen where the crowd would yell about protestors and Trump would scream, "Get them out, send them out of here!" and the crowd would scream "USA, USA, USA" until the attendees who were asked to leave were escorted out.

So, about 45 minutes to an hour into his speech, a group of teenage boys (who had been harassing us the entire time while we ignored their comments) screamed and pointed at us, yelling for us to be kicked out. At first we laughed it off, of course we couldn't be kicked out, we were just standing here silently. Wrong. A secret service member and a police officer were there within the minute, grabbed redacted and I by our arms, and started to lead us out. One of the Trump supporters we were chatting with even stood up for us, explaining that we weren't doing anything and weren't being disruptive. By now the crowd was chanting their USA run and a large portion was also booing us out.

The walk through the crowd was very upsetting, being screamed at and filmed, even one man said "Go to China if you like communism so much!" (Communism?? Don't you mean democratic socialism??). But also, along the walk out, some attendees would high five us or shake our hands, and thank us for coming and supporting Bernie. It felt weird to be thanked, due to us not doing anything besides standing quietly. As the two men walked us out, one explained that if we returned we would be arrested. Redacted quickly asked why that was. The man replied with "They don't want you here," to which she said "Isn't it a constitutional right to silently protest?" The officer replied "Not here."

The rude remarks and yells didn't stop at the door, for Trump-supporters who didn't get in greeted us with just as much hatred. The walk back to my truck even included a man yelling from his car about how this was for Trump people and that we didn't belong here and shouldn't have come. This kind of hatred is what is ruining this country. To think that my right to protest was taken from me AT A RALLY, scares the hell out of me for if Trump actually became president and got that power. What else would he take away from us if he can't even stand two teenage girls standing silently at a FREE, PUBLIC, OPEN-TO-EVERYONE event? If you're thinking of voting Trump this year, please rethink your stance. This much hate belongs nowhere near the presidency.

^^
frightening.

fair points -- not you, frederik -- but i guess i wonder why sanders is being quite so shit upon? as a white guy he has certainly not experienced racism like black americans have; he offered a personal anecdote that was an eye-opening moment for him. maybe he should have realized it sooner -- and reinforced that nothing has changed -- and maybe his anecdote should have encompassed the larger black experience, but compared to platitudes like

But she said that she takes seriously the struggles that nonwhite Americans face, as well as the worry this injects in their lives. She alluded to the pain and fear suffered by the parents of Trayvon Martin, a black teenager killed by a neighborhood watchman in Florida in 2012, and many others like him and said that she has tried to encourage other white Americans to give that some thought.

it doesn't seem so off. how is 'taking seriously the struggles' or 'trying to encourage white americans to give that some thought' significantly better?

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/272153-trump-i-think-i-get-the-worst-publicity

“They make up stories, they write stuff. If you sneeze, they make a big deal out of it. I’ve been No. 1 almost from the beginning. These people are so stupid. These ads are so vicious and they’re so false,” he said. "These are the worst, most dishonest ads I have ever seen. I don’t need this folks,” Trump added of his White House run. "I had such an easy life. (I have) a wonderful family, a wonderful company (and) a wonderful everything. My whole life has been about taking, grabbing, greed. Now it’s about taking for the United States.”

this guy is messed up psychologically

like seriously why isn't this attack #1? he's unstable. he has some kind of personality disorder. all this whining and complaining about poor, poor donald over reporters doing their jobs and some ads he doesn't like.

Two suburban, semi-rural communities bordering my city were in the news last week. One had an incident where people were yelling "Trump!" and making "build a wall" comments at a visiting, mostly Latino basketball team. Another had a school board meeting where it was decided high school students in the district should be saying the pledge of allegiance daily.

The high school near me in the city, however, repurposed one of the teacher-only restrooms as a non-gendered restroom any student can use.

xpost maybe the next step here for those who are willing to go through with it is, turn right back around and return to the trump rally and get yourselves arrested. see how that plays once they start actually arresting people

thanks for your helpful response djp.

and doctor casino.

super-otm both.

nothing to add.

now please allow me to take this fucking "bernsplainer" costume off.

He's yelling at a small arena near here this Friday or next Friday, and I briefly thought about taking my kids to hang at a silent protest, but it's just not worth it. It'd be like taking them to hang at a Limp Bizkit show.

A Limp Bizkit show would be safer and more fulfilling.

I'm not sure it would be either of those things - well, maybe it would be in 2016 - but it would definitely be as stupid and loud.

fair points -- not you, frederik -- but i guess i wonder why sanders is being quite so shit upon?

Because a lot of Sanders fans are saying "clearly Sanders is the only rational choice black people have, I mean he marched in the Civil Rights movement; why don't black people understand that Hillary is in the Klan" and it's helpful to point out the have been multiple points where Sanders has been a tone-deaf monster whose platform doesn't actually seem like the magic panacea it's being sold as, even assuming he could present it to a Congress that would implement it?

that post josh quoted -- i was picturing a coupla big tough silent guys throughout and then at then at the end the writer identifies herself and her friend as her teenage girls. that makes the scenario scarier, i think; also shows quite a level of bravery on their part.

DJP &c thank you for your recent posts in this thread; i hadn't really understood about this failing of the sanders campaign and it's something most of the media i've read fails to really engage with ('sanders is not performing well amongst black voters -- why is a mystery! let's talk about bill clinton playing the saxophone.)

calling sanders a "monster" seems to be overselling it a bit, to me

it would

the caucus I attended was pretty split -- a few black voters in the Sanders camp, mostly younger, about ten or so of my black neighbors in the Hillary camp

anyway i appreciated the conflictedness doc casino brought with his post. that original washington post article we're all talking about, as a piece of writing, is pretty otm in its diagnosis if we're to take sanders's comments literally. (i'm a bit more inclined to cut him some slack, as this was a response to a question at a live televised debate, rather than an essay or a speech -- but maybe that's my problem to work through.) where it fails for me is when it tries to come to a tidy conclusion -- calling sanders' statement's "false" rather than, you know, poorly worded

i do think it's great that he's bringing the poor into the mainstream democratic discussion, even if it unfortunately sometimes comes at the price of overshadowing the equally-as-important factor of race. i think in the long run his campaign will be good for the democratic party. as will, of course, the people calling him out for his blind spots

Josh Marshall wrote a piece today reassuring readers that Trump's primary appeal will have trouble after the convention as he seeks to court general election voters, but he included this:

To put this concretely, most Democrats will never support Trump for simple policy reasons, even if there are segments of the Democratic coalition that might. But what we are talking about here is a distinction between policy and political mentality, specifically a view of politics based on resentment and desire for revenge. And that operates with a large minority but not close to a majority of the electorate.

Sure. But because he -- I'm -- Muslim or black, he doesn't have to regard the “distinction between policy and political mentality” as an abhorrence; it's his privilege. Only an American citizen who doesn’t wince at the stirring of racial, ethnic, and religious resentments at Trump rallies can claim the high ground so calmly. Unless I'm reading Marshall wrong, his intelligent piece totally misses that point. I’ve said in conversation and here that the vileness Trump epitomizes should get exposed. I'm having second thoughts. Exposure is not expungement. And what price?

*uh because he's NOT Muslim or black

that post upthread about the girls escorted out of the rally is enraging.

like....we can talk all we want about how Trump's platform isn't really all that conservative and how he wouldn't do much more than be inept if elected President and so on and so forth, but I have a much larger problem with how he has cultivated and bred an ignorant, xenophobic, hateful fanbase, and doesn't condemn the behavior, but rather encourages it. Cruz might be a much more 'insane' dude, but at least when I see his looney-toon supporters on the street, I can laugh at them and walk away.

yes, a large part of his base are misguided folks that are struggling in the new post-recession economy and foolishly think he's the answer, but a large part of his base is also just ignorant pieces of shit.

dueling monsters, everbuddy!

anyway i appreciated the conflictedness doc casino brought with his post. that original washington post article we're all talking about, as a piece of writing, is pretty otm in its diagnosis if we're to take sanders's comments literally. (i'm a bit more inclined to cut him some slack, as this was a response to a question at a live televised debate, rather than an essay or a speech -- but maybe that's my problem to work through.)

― k3vin k., Tuesday, March 8, 2016 3:54 AM (9 minutes ago)

i'm feeling much the same -- that's why i wasn't feeling that inclined to condemn hillary for her clumsy remarks on reconstruction a few debates back (it seems like months, god this election shit lasts forever), even though taken literally they were pretty offensive.

xpost https://www.softexpressions.com/Merchant2/graphics/00000001/bkV/VariThem200.jpg

Xpost Whoever those girls were, they found video of themselves being escorted out. Trump fans applauding and looks mundane enough, but even reading their post I can't imagine how it felt and sounded from their perspective, getting booed and yelled at. Tough cookies.

i think the media is still dominated by the voices of those who don't worry that the worst resentments were fueled by by trump will come back on them in any real way.. um.. the short version here is that if you're already on guard against being the target of a hate crime what trump is stirring up is not a joke and never was

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/donald-trump-rally-protester-crack-down-220407

Donald Trump’s rally here began with the candidate asking all attendees to raise their hands and take an oath to vote for him, while extended barriers cordoned off the press and plainclothes private intelligence officers scoured the crowd for protestors. (..) On Friday, two members of Trump’s private security team wore street clothes to a rally in New Orleans. One of them, Eddie Deck, explained to reporters that his duties were now weighted towards intelligence work researching potential protesters and assisting uniformed security personnel under the direction of Trump’s head of security.

I have a hard time with schoolyard bullying of this magnitude being a staple of a guy who wants to be fucking President. I mean obviously "being a dick" has to be every candidates' M.O. at some point, but there's a difference between conventional mudslinging and actively being a snickering, frat-ish alpha-dog that enjoys intimidation tactics.

The thing about these Trump rallies, as scary as they might seem or be, I'm not sure they're terribly different from what we've seen at past GOP rallies in recent memory, especially since the rise of the Tea Party. The biggest difference is the degree of coverage, thanks to the high profile candidate, and also the way the candidate is flat-out saying the same looney shit as his supporters (versus merely exploiting it for votes). But this stuff has been out there for several cycles now. As the Remnick piece I posted pointed out:

The socioeconomic forces are real, but Trump is also the beneficiary of a long process of Republican intellectual decadence. Paul Ryan denounces Trump but not the Tea Party rhetoric that propelled his own political ascent. John McCain holds Trump in contempt, but selected as his running mate Sarah Palin, the Know-Nothing of Wasilla, one of Trump’s most vivid forerunners and supporters. Mitt Romney last week righteously slammed Trump as a “phony” and a misogynist, and yet in 2012 he embraced Trump’s endorsement and praised his “extraordinary” understanding of economics.

Yeah in some ways this is about the progress of a (bowel) movement from syndicated radio to prime-time TV.

But yeah, the asshole "what, me?" deflection of this CNN interview:

ACOSTA: Rallies, don't you have some responsibility to keep the peace at these rallies?

TRUMP: Well, I have nothing to do with it. When you have 25,000 people in a building -- you know, today we had to send away so many thousands of people, we couldn't get them in. If you have that many people, if you have four or five people or ten people stand up out of 22,000 that are in this building that I'm speaking to, a very great entertainer said, Donald, you're the biggest draw in the world without a guitar, which is sort of an interesting --

ACOSTA: But sir, can I ask a follow-up?

TRUMP: I won't tell you that was great Elton John. I will not tell you that. But somebody did make that statement. When you have that many people -- you understand -- in a room, and you'll have a couple of, not skirmishes, just a couple of protests. Really not skirmishes. And we treat them very gently. You know, ten years ago, they would have been treated differently, not by me, but by -- that's the way life is. We treat them very, very gently. And yeah, we had a few protesters today, but very few. I mean, if a look at it as a percentage, we had what, 0.01% of the people in the room.

ACOSTA: You don't think it's something that continues to happen at your events?

TRUMP: No, look, I watched Bernie Sanders have a protest. He was up at the microphone and two young ladies came up and took the microphone away from him. That will never happen with me. He walked meekly to the back of the room. And I said, isn't that pathetic? Isn't that sad?

This guy is just the asshole of assholes. You're weak for standing up to him, you're weak for doing nothing, everyone else is doing it wrong because he is the only one doing it right, and the best, and the greatest. He's just such a huge shit.

"Progress"

xxxxpost idk tho - the Tea Party rallies were bad enough for being essentially just excuses to yell really loudly during townhalls and shout "nazi policy" every so often. it was a bunch of privileged white assholes on their worst behavior.

but there's a vileness to the Trump rallies that seems like an extra layer - mostly in that where most candidates would quickly (perhaps disingenuously so) distance themselves from their worst supporters, Trump is refusing to, and in many cases he's smirking at it.

even a Tea Party dude woulda quickly put as much distance between himself and the KKK - Trump didn't because he doesn't want to. he likes all of his support, even when it comes from hate groups. and he isn't being forced to walk it back because even after seeing KKK Grand Wizards championing his cause and his own reticence to tell them to fuck off, his fanbase just doesn't give a shit and still loves him.

http://nypost.com/2016/03/05/why-i-support-trump-and-resent-the-elites-trying-to-destroy-him/

thought this was interesting - a lot of truth + relatable sentiments along w/ obv myopia

But the Tea Party had an underbelly that, while concealed on the Hill and on the networks, was manifest elsewhere.

Xp

Late to the party, but it would be cool if people were also hammering Clinton on casting her apology about "super-predators" as a "poor choice of words" instead of a toxic ideology. Just because the democratic slate is less tone-deaf on issues of race than the lunatic repubs doesn't mean they aren't both crazy tone-deaf on issues of race.

For reference on why that usage needs to more than a cursory apology there's this:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/04/07/us/politics/killing-on-bus-recalls-superpredator-threat-of-90s.html?referer=&_r=0

"It certainly had consequences. It energized a movement, as one state after another enacted laws making it possible to try children as young as 13 or 14 as adults. (New York had such a law even earlier, and it is now being applied to Kahton Anderson.) Many hundreds of juveniles were sent to prison for life, though in the last few years the United States Supreme Court has ruled that such sentences must not be automatic, even in murder cases. Individual circumstances and possible mitigating factors should be weighed, the justices said.

Inescapably, superpredator dread had a racial component. What the doomsayers focused on, in the main, were young male African-Americans. For Steven A. Drizin, a law professor at Northwestern University writing for The Huffington Post last September, the deep-seated fear that any black teenager in a hoodie must be up to no good was essentially what got Trayvon Martin killed in Florida two years ago."

FYI last paragraph of that link is WILDLY IGNORABLE.

Yeah I was loathe to bring that up bc it was twenty years ago, but really the Clintons record on race is Not Good. They were not fighting against racial disparities in sentencing in the 90s. Sanders was though, even if he ultimately voted for that notorious crime bill. cf.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZJ7f-3XGB4&sns=em
I do think that he is a more compassionate and better person than Hillary fwiw, even though I understand DJP's concern that he seems to have a hard time discussing racism without subsuming it under his main concern, economic inequality

"More compassionate and better person" obv isn't the only meaningful criteria, and obv I don't know these candidates as individuals, but going off their records I trust Bernie more to listen to the concerns of people who are oppressed or marginalized

Bernie is an ideological politician looking for the support of a coalition party. It's on him to address the various components of that coalition in terms that matter to them. Bringing it all back to the organizing ideology is only appealing if you already believe that ideology will help you.

There's possibly a critique along these lines one could draw from the Sanders and Clinton campaigns' respective logos. HRC's arrow is visually uninspiring or even hackneyed on its own but its graphic simplicity allows its interior to be repurposed for any context, just give it Pride colors or put a photo of corn or children in that arrow. It's the logo of a campaign that knows it wins by being all things to all people. Bernie's first-name logotype isn't really much less embarassing than Jeb!'s. Bernie isn't running a personality campaign per se, but he's running on a singular message, trying to attract voters by staying on that message. This worked out well for my socialist city council member here in Seattle but even locally that sort of on-message consistency gets grating.

The best candidates are empty signifiers, the worst thing you could be in 2016 is too specific.

except it's by being really specific about that message that's gotten Bernie as far as he's gotten! And the whole point of the candidacy is to re-establish that those specific concerns have very large, unaddressed constituencies. I think his ethic could be rendered richer and more synthetic and ultimately more powerful by incorporating other issues of social justice at the core rather than as add-ons, but I don't think it would have been useful in any way for him to become a vague grab-bag candidate. His answer the other night on fracking, for example, is or at least appears to be general-election suicide as of right now, but seriously how great is it for someone just to be like, fuck, that, it's a bad idea, the answer's no. I want to hear the grab-bag wind-checking politicians adopting Bernie's arguments in order to win, not the other way around.

voters don't seem to agree that sanders' record is better