END TO END BERNERS: The Official Bernie Sanders 2020 Crew thread

If Sanders loses, the fight continues. If Sanders wins, we celebrate for one blissful evening and then the fight dramatically escalates, which is both terrifying and the whole point

— Meagan Day (@meaganmday) December 9, 2019

Hell yeah!

imo it should dramatically escalate either way

It should have escalated a while back

She's otm but I can't stand her tweets.

same tbh

The folks on the great podcast Trillbilly Worker's Party were talking about this in their most recent episode too, the way that things will likely really pop off if Bernie wins the presidency. I enjoyed their conversation.

if you're an american anywhere to the left of joe biden i would get prepared to be called an antisemite even more than usual in the coming months

— Dan Base (@allahliker) December 12, 2019

Actually this wasn't the reason Corbyn lost at all however US discourse is bound to be poisoned by AS.

Nate Silver is shit.

Just pure trolling at this point https://t.co/LutDIbmgLn

— Will🧙‍♂️Menaker (@willmenaker) December 13, 2019

dude what is your problem lol

Sanders has more experience than Warren, but otherwise are there major flaws here?

Corbyn's defeat not only re-energized US libs who hate, slander and smear Bernie in particular and socialists in general, but some favorably compare Hillary's loss to Corbyn's. (To the degree they accept the loss--Putin, Bernie, Stein, Sarandon, etc.) Delusional, but disciplined.

— Dennis Perrin (@DennisThePerrin) December 13, 2019

The energy is overwhelming

"endorsements are weighted by recency" probably responsible for bloomberg being fucking #4

I mean, Hillary got more votes than her opponent, that would be pretty sweet.

the uk election just shows that centrists are the problem (again)!

Bernie is finished. There's no way he can formulate a position on Brexit to win over seats in northern England

— alex (thot catalogue) ☭🌹 (@ButAsABit) December 14, 2019

Some good news to start your Monday:

Bernie is in a statistical tie for first place nationally. It's happening.

The surge is real! https://t.co/EnjkoO6sX1

— 🎅🏻🦌A Christmas Carlo🎄🎁 (@yesthatCarlo) December 16, 2019

I'd have liked for this to happen later than now, but, beats never!

looking forward to the STEYER SURGES TO 0% headlines

long new Buzzfeed feature

Eventually, when asked, he comes to describe this as core to his strategy to win.

“Here’s the gamble,” Bernie says. The gamble is there are millions of working people who don’t vote or consider politics to be relevant to their lives. “And it is a gamble to see whether we can bring those people into the political process,” he says. “One way you do it is to say, ‘You see that guy? He’s YOU. You’re workin’ for $12 an hour, you can’t afford health insurance — so is he. Listen to what he has to say. It’s not Bernie Sanders talking, you know? It’s that guy. Join us.”

And yet, on a Tuesday night, in one moment, the full force of the political revolution, all 50 years of it, came grinding so unquestioningly to a halt by one blocked artery. He will spend two and a half days in the hospital — and he will lie there hooked up to their beeping machines, and he will yell at the doctors when they try to ask him stupid questions, and he will quiz them about health care policy and obsess over what all this would cost without insurance — and there will be a crisis over what to say in the press release and when to say it and if it can wait until Jane is able to deliver the news in person to the seven grandkids before they see it on CNN, and there will be reporters stalking him outside the building, and all sorts of people will want to visit — and for days, he will say over and over again, “I can’t believe I had a heart attack… I can’t imagine how I had a heart attack… I can’t imagine…” like this is a fact he simply cannot accept, because he feels fine as soon as they finish the procedure and because he’s always had terrific “endurance”... Never thought it’d be his heart to cause him problems… Ran a 4:37 mile in high school...!

But not once, in all that chaos and frustration, will he consider dropping out.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rubycramer/you-dont-know-bernie-sanders

lol the subhead of this piece.

Also fuck this guy:

When moderate Democrats hear Sanders talk like this, they reach for a Xanax.

James Carville, the former Bill Clinton strategist, said a magazine article like this one about a Sanders presidency belongs in the “fiction section.” Matt Bennett of the center-left group Third Way envisioned a failed presidency that splintered the Democratic Party. “I can imagine a world of almost pure stasis where nothing whatsoever happens, because he’s too radical for his own party, not to mention the opposing party,” Bennett said. “He is too ideological to govern.” You can envision moderate Democrats like him forming a noisy faction of the “Never Bernie” opposition.

Reagan, Bush II, and Trump sure were too ideological to govern!

I am so fucking sick of these rules that only apply to people who want good things for this country

It's a tragedy that Matt Bennett was in a coma from 2010-2016. He's probably still struggling with the muscle atrophy.

he should have his gizzard eaten

a 2-front war vs the Trumpists and Clintonites... I thirst for blood

watch out for the Obaman drone army

Recently found that Bernie's 2006 senate campaign website had a Flash game where he flies a biplane set to banjo music while he collects Hydrogen fuel and avoids literal fat cats.

I didn't do to well as this video attests, but the link still works!https://t.co/HP9CK4mIiv pic.twitter.com/HySkUhKmcs

— Nathan McDermott (@natemcdermott) December 16, 2019

LOL

Flappy Bern

I don't want to sound hostile, especially at this time of year, but if you honestly believe that Bernie Sanders, who had family slaughtered in the Holocaust, is an anti-Semite or tolerates anti-Semites, get away from me. Go roll in your own feces and spare me the stench.

— Dennis Perrin (@DennisThePerrin) December 18, 2019

non sequitur. i don't think sanders is an antisemite or that trying to smear him as one will be an effective line of attack for his political opponents but his losing family in the holocaust tells u nothing about his feelings about jews or judaism.

really

"Go roll in your own feces and spare me the stench" for January's US politics thread?

I liked that tweet that said 'Not only is Sanders not an anti-semite, but he is a shining example of how to criticize policies of Israel without using anti-semitic tropes.' But Berners should learn from the Corbyn debacle and not fall back on an offended and self-righteous attitude that won't convince anyone. Akm and crüt - I think - criticized the appointment of Sarsour as a surrogate back in september, it can legitimately be seen as a mistake. And Bernie sometimes makes mistakes! Like with Cenk Uygur. Everyone makes me mistakes, to win the nomination, learn from mistakes, don't make them again. Then it won't become a big deal.

honestly can’t imagine caring about whatever made-up smears regarding what the only serious jewish presidential candidate in history’s views on anti-semitism are, but that’s just me. what’s the audience for this stuff other than right-wing trolls?

libs

Should I really engage this with any depth? I feel like it's a big mistake. I'll just say that Bernie has been in the Counterpunch orbit of foreign policy thinkers and that group includes people with lots of questionable quotes and views about Israel and Jews. This may just be a risk of being a cultural leftist who may be a committed anti-imperialist - you're going to have some gross fellow travelers. The extent to which you tolerate or even promote such people may get you negative attention. As I mentioned I don't think Bernie has crossed this rubicon but I don't think this is just some cynical bullshit right-wing troll thing (tho it may be that too).

Like even if you a) it's unfair to be smeared with your associates or b) that Counterpunch ideologies aren't *really* antisemitic, or c) that Sarsour has been unfairly smeared or d) whatever reason you think such a claim is totally bullshit -- I may even agree with you but it's worth understanding what it going on here that it isn't simply evil bad guys making up shit. This has been an issue on the anti-imperial left for many decades and it's not a shock that it should come up *especially* when it aligns with other convenient biases (against Sanders or left-wing socialism or pro-Israel/pro-Zionism/anti-Palestinian sentiment). It's a real target even when the people targeting it are using it because it's convenient.

i feel like i must have missed a bunch of posts with real information on this. cause me personally, i'd find it helpful to have something a bit more specific than "he's been in the orbit of a group, which may overlap with people who have questionable quotes and views," before i go ahead with putting a "target" on anybody. like maybe there is something to worry about, but as written it doesn't even rise to being smeared with your associates, since i don't even know which specific associates we're talking about and what they're supposed to have done or said. so some people he might or might not know have "questionable quotes and views about Israel and Jews" ---- this could mean almost anything depending on the person raising the "questions." if he hasn't "crossed this rubicon" then why even start hand-wringing about it? i know lots of people who haven't crossed lots of rubicons. but yeah sure let me start holding them in suspicion because they might potentially do so.

like.... what exactly are you trying to persuade us of? are we supposed to buy that bernie sanders, what, has a bunch of anti-semitic nut friends? and he just benignly overlooks it? is he supposed to be dumb? or is he supposed to be a monstrous cynic willing to excuse anti-semitism if he encounters it in leftist fellow-travelers? and this is supposed to strike us as not only possible, but so plausible that we should work up a lot of concern over it based on basically zero detail? it seems like sub-sub-sub-Reverend-Wright level controversy-mongering, or sub-swiftboating in terms of stirring up clouds of suspicion around what should be a fairly uncontrovserial part of someone's biography and political formation.

A specific campaign surrogate has been mentioned multiple times that's a lot of writing to ask for information that has been provided I feel like?

it's a lot of writing, to confirm that this is just the same "surrogate" thing we discussed in september in the 2020 primary thread, which then died on the vine because nobody had anything more substantial to offer as far as i read. i did read up on the sarsour stuff and was IIRC hard-pressed to find signs of sanders turning a blind eye to anti-semitism. i'm open to the possibility that i overlooked some really damning detail at that time, or more recently, in which case shame on me.

otherwise, i think details matter because swiftboating and guilt by association both depend on vague insinuations and it's sort of hard to debate those. if aspersions are going to be cast, then i do think it's helpful to spell out what the person is supposed to have said or done that's a problem. or if the issue is the company they keep, then it needs to be specific people who've done specific things (not just some general milieu of people who might be associates of other people), which he's specifically enabled or to which he has specifically turned a blind eye.

maybe that seems like an unfairly high standard or burden on the accuser? to me it feels like a necessary bulwark against just becoming a telephone-game rumor mill ("i have it on good authority that many concerned people have raised concerning concerns") and anyway against the confusion that i think we all know comes on the internet and with discourse around palestine and israel. we all know that "anti-Jewish" often turns out to mean "anti-occupation" or other such sleights of hand, depending which publications and authors are involved. and so i do feel like when public figures are vaguely and indirectly "targeted" in this manner, that it's worth figuring out which ones actually are anti-semites. this is even more true than ever with the ascendance of right wing and neo-nazi discourses - there are a lot of public figures who ARE very dangerous, fascistic anti-semites and there IS an urgent need to identify and stop them.

You're probably right that all of that is important, so I think you should go and help do it. Because, yes, it's a high burden on the accuser, and a lot of the accusers are right-wing trolls, and they aren't going to do it.

I think both Mordy and I are explicitly saying that we don't think Sanders is an anti-semite? All we are saying is that it would be a really good idea to take this conversation, to go look up evidence with an open mind, sift through it. Instead of yelling 'Go roll in your own feces'. It helps with the defence.

it's kind of hard to not respond that way when lengthier rebukes create the impression that there are "serious discussions" around the issue which can end up giving the accusation more weight, as we saw with the UK media and Corbyn (while Tory racism/xenophobia went more or less completely ignored)

so far i've done what i was told which was to go read up on sarsour, but what i read in september and what i read today have not raised anything that seems remotely troubling...? but i am not jewish and also can be a dope, so i may be missing some really important implications of things that i read, or there were other things i should have read that would have explained everything. so if there's something there, or something other than the sarsour case, maybe someone less burdened will be kind enough to point my attention to it. right now it still feels like "there are a lot of concerns about concerning things" but sure yeah it's not anybody's job to disabuse me of that notion.

imo this is a perfect storm of:

1. a multifaceted issue that the media/Discourse treats as a simple binary ("x is/isn't AS")
2. that is also virtually impossible to DISprove
2. when bad actors with ulterior motives and no scruples are legion

how can you fight that effectively in instances where there's little to no "there" there except to tell people to get fucked

and of course to make it all the more maddening no one in the media gives a fuck about AS on the right, as David Graeber chronicles in this thread

leaked from Meltwater (corporate media monitoring tool). Mentions of phrases in press:

2015
Labour Anti-Semitism
1 result
Conservative Anti-Semitism
0 results
Tory Anti-Semitism
0 results:

2016
Labour Anti-Semitism
2.52k results
Conservative Anti-Semitism
0 results

1/

— David Graeber (@davidgraeber) December 18, 2019

Reading about Women's March 2019 didn't seem remotely troubling?