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

okay, so fair enough. i think it comes off as concern trolling because in general you're much more supportive of clinton than most posters here (which, you're right, i should not assume makes you a clinton supporter as such), and because you seem so down on sanders even having the capacity to do any of the things it's hypothesized that he might do, so the 'advice' seems somehow less sincere. but i can relate to being concerned and worried about the prospects of things. if it comes around to november and sanders is not doing anything with his massive support base to help then maybe we can reopen this conversation.

it's a tricky one too for all the reasons that someone skeptical of sanders in the first place might point out: is it better to back a fetterman, whose politics are right on, but risk losing by a hair or more against this total asshole incumbent who will otherwise become a permanent fixture? or back a middle-of-the-road democrat that has less in common with the sanders movement (and thus inspires less roaring enthusiasm) for the sake of just getting toomey gone? (then there are lots of x factors: what if fetterman sucks as a candidate? what if his look and feel end up turning off a lot of people that agree with his message?) this is stuff that's really easy for me to say in the abstract - go left, be bold, don't look back - but not so easy for me to impose on people living in pennyslvania. also part of what i mean about it being a minefield for sanders to get into the habit of endorsing every progressive candidate for everything, or in general for people who haven't secured their own nominations to go around hitching their wagons together with unknowns - - - some of them might turn out to be raving uninformed campus liberals, some might have horrible skeletons in their closet ("BREAKING: SANDERS PAL IS PORNO KING"), god knows. i know this sounds like me arguing for the 'safe' and personally/visually normative centrist. but we're having a conversation about strategy/tactics (what's the most useful thing for sanders to do with limited money and limited hours in a day), and these things probably do enter into it.

(in the interest of reassuring you, separate from sanders: i think people will be pretty motivated by the presence of a trump/cruz at the top of the ticket to come out and vote blue all the way down. impossible to predict this far out but if the unappealingness of the republican nominee makes this even a baby-sized 'wave' election, then toomey - who didn't win by a huge margin in 2010 and has horrible approval ratings - would need a heck of an incumbency effect to keep his seat imo.)

welp, i can't think of anything, so here we go:

Conventional Mealy Mouths: The 2016 Primary Voting Thread, Part 5

no it's not funny and it's a terrible name but fuck man, i'm at work

as for 'feel good stuff' and facebook - well, i dunno. i refer to facebook, not reddit, because i am thinking of a very person-to-person kind of thing (also i have never used reddit and don't really understand it) so my model are things like my best friend going to sanders's campaign-video shoot last week in brooklyn, and sharing stuff and then catching her sisters at dinner and having a long long conversation about sanders (re: their agreement with his policies vs. their pre-existing desire to support clinton for 'historic'/female president reasons) and maybe winning one or two of them over. that's anecdotal, and it's tiny by itself, but those are real effects. given that they are her sisters it's likely this conversation would have happened without facebook (actually i may even be screwing up the order of events), but i'm just saying, it's that kind of communication that leads me to invoke facebook - - - not talking about hiveminds of bernie die-hards unknown to each other, echo-chambering their tiny world and excorciating their perceived enemies/conspiracies/whatever. though i'm sure that goes on, based on my sweaty and ill-smelling stereotype of reddit.

anyway my point is that where you're seeing "good feelings" i'm seeing a commitment to spread the word, to persuade, to fight on. it's hard for me to entirely grasp tbh because i'm still kinda cynical and inactive and old and sure, lazy i guess. this friend though, she seems really lit up, like she's been waiting without realizing it forever to hear candidates talk about stuff like this, and she's getting in touch with people doing multi-lingual voter organizing and shit. i can't assume right this second that she's going to pack all of that in once bernie quits, or that the voter organizing and registration and stuff won't end up mattering in november even if she does. i would also refer you to my post above concerning possible knock-on effects of just people staying involved and organized and getting their friends to turn up when there's a rally for the minimum wage next march or whenever. it mighta got buried in a longer post; sorry for paragraph rockin'.

oh oops. well, farewell old thread. we still have il douché and we certainly still have discontent. but it's been a good one.

Thread sucked

the new thread has close-ups of mouths, you should check it out d

I've been in and I like the look of it already, good work imo I've not felt this optimistic about a change in US politics since Bernie sanders ran for the Dems in 2016