Sorry, but this is asinine:
Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign requested a recanvass in Kentucky’s presidential primary Tuesday, where he trails Hillary Clinton by less than one-half of 1 percent of the vote.
The Sanders campaign said it has asked the Kentucky secretary of state to have election officials review electronic voting machines and absentee ballots from last week’s primary in each of the state’s 120 counties.
Sanders signed a letter Tuesday morning requesting a full and complete check and recanvass of the election results in Kentucky.
“He’s in this until every last vote is counted and he’s fighting for every last delegate,” said Sanders’ spokesman Michael Briggs.
According to the Associated Press article, there is only one delegate remaining to be assigned in Kentucky. That’s in the sixth congressional district, where Clinton currently holds a slim 500 vote lead. Certainly, they should get that count right and assign the delegate accordingly, but otherwise the two candidates split the delegates evenly, 27 to 27. Sanders doesn’t stand to gain any delegates by forcing a recount of all 120 counties in Kentucky. He isn’t fighting for every last delegate. He’s just making up a controversy to throw sand in everyone’s eyes.
This isn’t adult behavior. I hate to say it, but it’s just not.
My biggest concern with Sanders was that he wasn’t a fighter. The thing I like most about Clinton is her willingness to play dirty. Sanders still has a ways to go, but at least he’s no Gore.
I agree. I’m all for it. I think he’d be a great prez who takes no guff (whatever that is;)).
Sadly, he won’t ever be president. But I very much hope that he’s the forerunner of a progressive movement that is unafraid of causing offense or looking asinine in its pursuit of power.
Same here.
If he can refocus on getting progressives elected since this election cycle is all but over minus some type of HRC meltdown, that’d be amazing.
Projecting much?
Betcha never called it trolling when Gore sued for recounts in FL.
Betcha wouldn’t call it trolling if this were the general election and HRC were down by less than 1/2 of one percent in the one red state that decides the whole shooting match.
Good reason to suspect that there have been several places in this primary where a fair count did not take place. The noise from the HRC camp was deafening when it was suggested that Bernie ask for recounts; so, for months he and his team have had to move on.
I have thought all along he should, and would, ask for a recount in KY.
Conspiracy theories, gotta love ‘me.
That is ’em.
Trolls love repeating stupid meme like Conspiracy theories, gotta love ‘me.
I don’t even care about conspiracy theories.
Say that Bernie actually won Kentucky. He would get zero more delegates. The only delegate up for grabs is already being arbitrated, and he’ll either get it or he won’t.
He has to pay for these 120 counties to be counted, and that’s money from his $28 donors that could be spent in much more productive ways and without wasting the time of probably more than a thousand people who will have to do the work he’s paying for.
And, so, what’s the point?
That he should have gotten a headline that he won Kentucky? A headline that was worth at most one delegate?
This is just feeding a climate of paranoia and hostility that goes far beyond anything that is warranted, and it’s not going to help him in any way.
It’s somewhere between stupid, crazy, and petulant.
To be accurate, he can get the recanvassing for free, but an actual recount would cost him.
I guess the recount involves looking at actual ballots rather than just adding up the numbers again.
Oh Boo, don’t be silly. If you want to Bern down the establishment, you’ve gotta keep the reasons coming. Plus you need to stay in the news. What better way than to add another bullet to the grievance list, right?
“… it’s not going to help him in any way.”
Help with what? He lost. He lost months ago. It’s arguable that he lost before he even started, given the insider power disparity–if it’s ‘winning the nomination’ we’re talking about. So nothing he’s done for months mattered, in terms of ‘getting more delegates.’
You’re stuck in a box with this analysis. What does he gain by not demanding a recount? Pats on the head from the establishment? Appreciation as Very Serious? Perhaps that’s not a currency he values. What does he gain by demanding one (if he does)? He demonstrates that he’s not cowed by what establishment Dems and timid analysts say. He demonstrates a willingness to get his hands dirty. He demonstrates that he’s not, contra the Clinton camp hype, a unicorn-hugging idealist, but quite the opposite.
I very much hope that Sanders, as the most visible face of the progressive movement at the moment, demonstrates a willingness to stick a shiv in someone’s back. Not because it matters. Not because it’ll make a difference. Just because that’s how power works. If the establishment liberals are not afraid of their left flank–and they haven’t been in my lifetime–they will never move substantially leftward. Why would they?
He is wielding power, and as usual it makes liberals uncomfortable. It makes they say ‘petulant, stupid, crazy.’ Well, too bad. That’s democracy played for reals. (Although, frankly, I doubt Sanders has the stomach to take this too far.)
What Sanders actually requested is a recanvassing not a recount. He doesn’t pay for it.
And how do you know what the readjustment in delegates would or would not be?
Maybe his internal polling suggests a significant discrepancy.
It’s normal in a very close vote to request a recount.
46781/why-sanders-requested-a-recanvass-and-not-a-recount-in-kentucky
“A lot of people police their own brains. They’re like citizen soldiers, so to speak. I’ve seen people who will willingly arrest, try and punish their own brains. Now that’s really sad. That’s vigilante brain policism. It’s not even official, it’s like self-imposed. … It’s hard to pin it down to one central agency when you realize that so many people are willing to do it to themselves. I mean, the people who want to become amateur brain police, their numbers grow every day – people who say to themselves, ‘I couldn’t possibly consider that’, and then spank themselves for even getting that far. So, you don’t even need to blame it on a central brain police agency.” — Frank Zappa
See Doyle Greene, Rock, Counterculture and the Avant-Garde, 1966-1970: How the Beatles, Frank Zappa and the Velvet Underground Defined an Era (McFarland,2016), p.189.
Sorry, I meant p.89.
Now THAT is the Commodified Citizen!
And that was in 1988. I miss Zappa — not only was he one of the great American thinkers, but he set it all to music.
You will appreciate this essay…The smug style in American liberalism
(http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalism)
Thanks. I do appreciate it. What he’s talking about is not the issues themselves, but the refusal to engage the issues, or better, to even admit there are any issues. The smugness, in other words. And that’s what leads to things like Fox News and everything it represents. I don’t defend Fox News, and I don’t think that was the writer’s intention.
Did Grimes not go on TV and say that Clinton had it won before all the votes were even in? Also, too, KY voting machines suck. I think Boo is missing the point about why Sanders is probably doing this. It has nothing really to do with an extra delegate. It has to do with the crappy voting machines KY uses.
All due respect, but WTF are you talking about?
WTF is WHO talking about?
Oh, sorry. You mean Marie.
Well what about Brooklyn? That was much worse than Kentucky.
Although both Hillary and Bernie votes were obliterated, Brooklyn was the strongest borough for Sanders except for little Staten Island. Brooklyn is NYC’s most populous borough.
I, too, have been trying to figure out to whose comment Boo was replying. I think maybe it’s Marie’s about recounts? Not sure, though.
I think so. It was so far up thread I couldn’t see it.
Except this can’t change any delegates, except for the one district the Booman agrees should be recounted. It’s nothing like FL2000 or some hypothetical close race in 2016, because it’s not going to change anything. In those, the recount could actually make a difference.
This isn’t like asking for a recount when a state that decides the election is within less than half a point. If that one delegate decided the primary, it’d be like Gore.
No, this is like McCain asking for a recount in Indiana eight years ago. Even if it flipped the state, it wouldn’t have impacted the outcome. It’s just childish.
Clinton continues not to honor her commitments.
LA Times – Thanks, but no thanks — Hillary Clinton says no to a debate in California
This reminds me of a story from when I was 3 or 4 and kept trying to get my mother to let me go barefoot outdoors. But we lived in a part of the country that had a lot of poisonous spiders, so the answer was always “no!” One morning I was at the breakfast table looking out the window when a neighbor girl ran out of her house stark naked, her mother hot on her heels. I apparently was outraged and announced indignantly: “Gracie Ann gets to go barefoot!”
It reminds me of a story when I was 3-4 and my mother dropped me off at my grandmothers for the day. When they said good bye in the front yard I did not want to stay, so I planted myself and started to scream. Grandma said ‘fine, get it out of your system’ and went inside. I screamed and screamed, so long and so loud the neighbors started coming out to see what the hell was going on. Finally, after about 20 minutes Grandma got embarrassed and worried and came out to get me. As soon as she was in reach I bit her on her bare calf tand would not let go.
So there we were, with the neighbors watching, and a tiny kid holding on to his grandmas calf with his teeth.
God she loved to tell that story. Twenty five years later when she met my wife, she told that story.
Thank you Lynne, for reminding me.
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Hillary has been an adult for fifty years and she agreed to a May debate when she was desperate for an second NH debate. Having gotten what she wanted, she feels entitled to stiff Sanders.
Exactly which party in all this are you likening to a four year old kid that had yet to develop the cognitive capacity to respond accordingly to known dangers?
Marie, I’m marveling at your ability to screen out pertinent facts.
As for nalbar, I’m just plain marveling.
Aha, it is spring and the aspens seem to be turning all at once.
Calling for recounts in close elections is pretty pro forma. In a sequence of primary battles, it’s kind of routine due diligence.
But it this rates a squawk, get it out of your system.
The Clinton camp has much more serious things to worry about than this, don’t you think?
Or are they going to be caught napping by the coming shitstorm?
It’s pro forma to pay for recounts that cannot net you a single delegate?
No it’s not.
No one does that.
To be accurate, he can get the recanvassing for free, but an actual recount would cost him.
I guess the recount involves looking at actual ballots rather than just adding up the numbers again.
I have no problem with Sanders requesting this recanvass. I fail to see how this makes him childish. JMHO, of course, but seems to me that this is how elections are carried out. Some things get dirty on all sides. I agree with what Sanders is doing. Frankly, Sanders is representing his constituents – as in “regular” citizens in the 99%. Speaking only for myself, I find it refreshing.
10 million “regular” citizens voted for sanders in this primary. thats 1 in 5 of the estimated 50 mil who will vote dem in nov. 1 in 10 of the estimated 100 mil who are eligible and lean left, half of whom dont bother to vote at all.
I think he’s just getting a headline. Keeping MSNBC busy. And it makes the Bernie or Bust people (anyone here???) go with the “it’s fixed” meme yet again. Distracts from the general election, since he must know by now that the argument with super-delegates isn’t going to fly, even if he wins Kentucky after a recanvass or a recount.
I saw the other day that one of his super-delegates switched to Clinton. From The Hill: “Emmett Hansen II, the Democratic National Committee superdelegate for the Virgin Islands, originally backed the Vermont senator but decided to switch after learning more about Clinton’s plans for the U.S. territories”.
I think he’d be better off trying to hold onto the delegates he has than to waste everyone’s time and headlines with this silly stuff.
Indeed.
He’s waging a p.r. battle against the DNC and Democratic election officials, who have more votes than he’d win even if he won Kentucky and it was winner-take-all.
You want to sway superdelegates by attacking their integrity and causing people to harass them?
You’re worried he might hurt their fee-fees? They can take it.
What?
Jesus.
What’s in the water around here?
Where in holy hell did you come up with that response?
Let’s say that are running for school class president and you’re just a little bit behind but the the freshman class hasn’t voted yet.
So, what’s your job?
Isn’t it to woo the freshman class?
But let’s say that the freshman class was in charge of counting the vote of the upperclassmen. They were in charge of setting up the rules.
Should you accuse them of rigging the system and demand that they recount the votes even though you know you don’t stand to benefit?
Won’t you lose more of their votes than you could ever hope to win in the recount?
And this is even worse because he cannot even theoretically benefit, at all, from this recanvassing.
If Sanders were trying to win, he’d do something sane and try to convince superdelegates to support him instead of attacking them relentlessly.
But he’s not trying to win, which is what this asinine move makes painfully obvious.
I saw one report (ABC, I think) that he was doing this to satisfy some of his supporters. There’s also the notion from the Hillary camp that he wants to raise money off it. That doesn’t make sense either. To me this is just the end game. It is not that anything will change but maybe it solidifies his creds among his more ardent supporters. Best just move on.
Not a valid analogy.
I don’t imagine “the freshman class” of the DNC would have been involved in any such thing, but IF any such thing actually happened (which it is the aim of a recount to find out), and IF it was deliberate (because it could have been just technical failure, I suppose), then I don’t care who gets offended. Nobody should be troubled except the parties responsible, i.e those who have a guilty conscience. To assume that the generality of perfectly innocent delegates would take umbrage (“shocked … just shocked … “) at Bernie for going for a recount in KY is just absurd.
This is a revolution though, right?
Honestly, Sanders is just flailing for headlines now. I flirted with the guy a bit, but his antics in New York left an ugly mark for me. He’s a politician who has fooled some people into thinking he isn’t one. That he’s making a righteous stink in public about process issues, while telling his Senate colleagues in private it’s all basically a lark, is the tell. For all the crap we throw at Clinton, Bernie’s got just as big an ego, and appears to be just as sore a loser, perhaps worse.
” it makes the Bernie or Bust people (anyone here???) go with the “it’s fixed” meme yet again. “
Booman’s basic premise throughout (and he’s right about this) is that Hillary’s whole nomination was fixed. Nobody was supposed to mount anything a serious challenge, even when the traditional choice would have been VP Biden. That was well known and pretty much adhered to.
If you take full account of this, you realize that Bernie’s campaign has been the only effective force towards redressing that initial fix.
My premise wasn’t that the process was “fixed.”
My observation was that Clinton was immensely popular with the very self-described progressives who would be needed to derail her nomination.
My observation was that the president was going to support her, cutting off most of the available votes from the black progressive community.
My observation was that the progressives in Congress were virtually all signed on for a Hillary nomination.
My observation was that there was no faction in Congress that would support a progressive challenger in general or Bernie in particular.
My observation was that Bernie did not make a real effort to get fellow progressives on his team, and launched his campaign without any of them having his back.
My observation was that his stance against the donor class would assure he couldn’t get money there, and (more importantly because he figured out the fundraising part of this) that the corporate media would be hostile.
Adding it all up, along with a late start and no boot camp for his organizers, and I knew that he had no chance.
We can add to this that the DNC, being an organ of the president’s operation and before that the Clinton’s operation, was going to put their finger on the scale, too.
But that wasn’t even necessary. And any challenger would need a plan to counteract, prevent, or neuter that advantage. Sanders’ only plan was to attack them.
Contrary to what you said elsewhere, it’s totally inaccurate to say that I can’t stand Bernie Sanders. When this began, he was probably my favorite politician in the country.
I didn’t and don’t think he’d be a good leader of the party or the country, but that doesn’t mean I don’t admire and like him, or that I don’t agree with him on most things.
Well thanks for clarifying. I would dispute some of your points, but it will have to wait for later.
That was obviously someone masquerading as Booman, because after all, we all know that he has been trying to “mind fuck” his readers. Or so he stands accused of.
I think we can agree that Bernie’s campaign would have had a more solid political foundation had he done what you say he should have done. But that would have required a lot of advance preparation, and I see no evidence that Sanders was contemplating a run against Hillary much before he actually announced it. He was not in a position to run a campaign similar to Obama. ALthough there are definite similarities, in that few thought Obama had a chance either, he was too far from what a mainstream candidate is supposed to look like.
The reason Bernie did decide to run, I believe, was the same reason that you believe it was hopeless. He felt a moral imperative and further, he did not believe it was hopeless. His strategy as underdog would be to do his best to win and, failing that, bring the maximum possible number of delegates to the convention — the latter part of which, at least, you have said many times that you agree with. That’s the course he charted and that’s exactly what he’s still doing.
As to Clinton’s popularity with self-described progressives, her having the president’s support (and much of the black vote), as well as of the D congress and all its factions; considering the successful efforts of the Clintons to consolidate financial and organizational control over the DNC, I call what Booman prefers to call immense popularity, as a fix. A lot of pressure was exerted against any genuine challenge. The situation shows a curious disconnect with the voters, progressives and independents, who have come to support Sanders in large numbers.
Certainly “the DNC was going to put their finger on the scale.” To me that’s not just one factor, it’s the main factor. How Sanders could neuter that huge advantage other than by exposing it through attacks is beyond me. And he has done and is doing an excellent job of exposing and explaining what the majority of voters in both parties already knew about how the system operates.
Don’t misunderstand. It’s not a fix that a lot of Democrats wanted Clinton, but rather that the party establishment didn’t want a viable challenger. Such as Biden. (I won’t say Bernie because nobody, including probably Bernie himself, was thinking of that.)
Because by no means all Democrats wanted Clinton, and that includes Booman himself, near as I can understand.
As far as Sanders not “making a real effort to get fellow progressives on his team”, given all the above, I do not think that would have been easy, much as they sympathized. But despite that there is significant support for Sanders in the House and in state legislatures.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bernie_Sanders_presidential_campaign_endorsements,_2016
As far as the observation that “his stance against the donor class would assure he couldn’t get money there, and (more importantly because he figured out the fundraising part of this) that the corporate media would be hostile” — I don’t think that has hurt him all that much, rather the reverse. He’s done very well on both counts.
I accept your protests that, in fact, you CAN stand Sanders, or better, that you “admire and like him”, all I can say is, if so, you have a funny way of showing it.
Bernie is right! The system is rigged! The party puts its finger on the scales for its preferred candidate!
http://www.shakesville.com/2016/05/its-pretty-rich-for-bernie-sanders-to.html?m=1
Yes, THE PARTY is always right. With all respect, Janicket, why have primaries at all, unless it’s for show.
Booman,
Over the past year, I’ve followed your comments on Sanders very closely , struggling hard to understand your thinking. I believe I’m finally beginning to understand.
Like many of us, you were outraged by the way Hillary bagged the nomination long before a single vote was cast. Unlike some (but I can understand the viewpoint), you were convinced that the battle against Hillary was lost before it began. But the only even plausible challenger to emerge, Bernie Sanders, you absolutely can’t stand, and you were more than willing not to consider him viable. On the one hand, no challenger could have succeeded; on the other, you wished even that doomed candidate could have been somebody else.
Two interesting questions emerge:
1.How exactly did Hillary wind up in that virtually unprecedented and utterly undemocratic position. (A non-incumbent treated like an incumbent.) And what was Obama’s role in it? And even in fantasy, it is contradictory to think Obama would challenge Hillary, since he was a key role in putting her there. Personally, I suspect that role was essentially “go along to get along”, with the Clintonistas — but who exactly was calling the shots, and how?
2. What is the cause of your visceral, and in my perception, unreasonable, dislike of Sanders? Of course, de gustibus non disputandum, but I still think the question is valid, since Sanders’s favorables, both as senator and as presidential candidate, are extremely high, and millions have found him not nly aspirational but inspirational.
And even his approach toward the primaries and the convention is defended by many traditional democrats and is certainly reasonable for an insurgent in such a transitional political moment as we are now experiencing.
http://www.thenation.com/article/bernies-philadelphia-challenge/
I’m not demanding answers, but I do think these are questions that are worth devoting some serious thought to.
What? Sanders ran a successful insurgent campaign, nearly the best in my lifetime, other than Hart and Obama, if you wanna call Obama insurgent. He didn’t get enough votes though and has spent his time since New York calling everybody besides himself corrupt in a fruitless effort to overwhelm Hillary’s pledged delegate lead via super delegates. In essence, he’s the one asking for establishment coronation at this point, not Hillary.
A basically guaranteed nomination is actually fairly normal in recent American politics. Recently – Romney 2012, Gore 2000, Bush 2000, Dole 1996, Bush 1988. How did Hillary get in the position? 40 years of hard work for Democrats and Democratic causes, all the way back to saving the Legal Services Corporation from Reagan in 1981, and an extremely close race in 2008 that left her able to re-assemble a very strong campaign organization very easily. People who know her or work for her really tend to like her too – that kind of personality makes it easy to get allies, and politics is about alliances.
This.
It’s a decades long trek of constant HARD work.
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You’re just repeating the conventional wisdom. Hillary was soundly defeated by Obama in 2008 and she is not an incumbent. Since Obama could not run again, Biden would have been the conventional choice in your sense.
Hillary was NOT a popular choice as a candidate except within the DNC, where the Clintons had huge influence and which they now control.
I want to repeat something I’ve posted several times already. The moment it became clear she was running for 2016 (and this was literally simultaneous with Obama’s second inauguration, and long, long before it was officially announced) her popularity began to fall, a descent that has continued unbroken right up to the present day.
As of mid-December 2012, when she was about to step down from her ostensibly non-political role as SoS, her aggregated favorability was very high, 58.2%. it is now 40.2. Her unfavorable is 55.4. http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/hillary-clinton-favorable-rating
I have referred to Hillary Clinton as the Martha Coakley of the national Democratic Party. This was not a good choice, it was an insider’s choice.
I don’t know where you live, but I wonder whether you know how the super-delegates from your state will vote? Do you like them? Trust them? Have you voted for them? Do they know Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders? Have they worked with them? What would they tell you about them?
I can answer yes to all those questions. It’s overwhelming that the people who know and have worked with Hillary Clinton have great respect and regard for her. I agree that she’s not always “on” as a campaigner. I wish she were. She is overly cautious (which compared to Trump might be an advantage). Her caution often comes across as equivocating.
But truly, I’m interested in your answers to my first set of questions.
I agree, the super delegates have so much respect for her that most of them were in her corner before a single vote was cast. And the Hillary Victory Fund, run through the DNC, helped a lot in that respect.
I don’t understand what agency, if any, you’re ascribing to the actual voters. Is it that millions more gullible fools in the Democratic Party voted for her, in your view? She seems to be a more “popular choice” than Sanders as judged by the Democratic primaries. And, you know, if she was “soundly” defeated in 2008…well, the results this year speak for themselves.
he’s got a song playing in his head that is all his own.
this is why he’s convinced himself that I can’t stand Bernie Sanders and can’t absorb the fact that it was her immense popularity with self-described progressives than convinced me that she would waltz to the nomination.
In his world, progressives are accurately represented by white guys with advanced degrees making arguments on progressive blogs about the many ways the underclass are getting screwed all the while ignoring who the underclass voted for in this campaign.
heh
more please
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I already said I stand corrected for saying you can’t stand Bernie Sanders, but I guess you didn’t see that.
But I’m also accused of having “a song playing in my head that’s all my own”, and that in my world “progressives are accurately represented by white guys with advanced degrees making arguments on progressive blogs about the many ways the underclass are getting screwed all the while ignoring who the underclass voted for in this campaign.”
Well, not quite. You see, Booman, I stand with Spike Lee, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Harry Belafonte, Rep. Keith Ellison, Rep. Nina Turner, South Carolina State Rep. Justin Bamberg, SC State Rep. Joe Neal, SC State Rep. Wendell Gilliard (D-Charleston), SC State Rep Robert Q Williams, SC State Rep Terry Alexander, Dr. Cornel West, Danny Glover, Ben Jealous, Killer Mike,
Big Boi of Outkast, James Sanders, Jr. NY state senator, 10th district, Jumaane Williams, Council member for the 45th District of the New York City, jounalist Shaun King of Black Lives Matter.
I stand with Jesse Smith, Alabama Vets for Bernie State Director (candidate for Alabama 3d Congr Dist),
with Maria Chappelle-Nadal (MO CD-14, currently member of state senate), Jennifer Gigi Ferguson (WA CD-10, Yelm), with Brandon Ellington Missouri House of Representatives, District 22, with Young Black Democrats of Western New York leader Katrinna Martin-Bordeaux. And many, many more.
I stand with the more than one out of four black voters 39 years of age or under across the country that support Bernie Sanders.
http://www.vox.com/2016/4/20/11466376/bernie-sanders-future-democrats
I stand with the future of the Democratic Party. But if it makes you feel better to insult me, go right ahead.
Oh boy! The list! A list so short that you can post it as a comment on the Internet.
And you know what one out of four voters of any age will get you?
First loser. And a nice shiny 12 dollar trophy to go on your mantle, right next to the rock your kid stole from the petrified forest on that trip out west you made in 1987.
——//
☝
And that people, is what a troll is.
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Ridicule. Check.
Ad hominem. Check.
Not engaging with the point. Check.
No substantive contribution to the discussion. Check.
Yes, people, that’s exactly what a troll is.
It’s actuall a rare double. I also referenced ‘what a troll is’, which gave me plausible deniability.
I’m not surprised you missed that.
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Boom! A triple!
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You’re a fucking genius, Nalbar.
No, real Progressives are not just white guys with degrees, what a kroc.
In fact, Southern HBCUs were the first organizations supporting Bernie after his announcement. He immediately sought their guidance and received their support but mainstream white America never noticed.
Count among Progressives Former OH State Rep Nina Turner, MN Lawyer & Prof. Nekima-Levy Pounds, Mark Stewart Tillman (Alpha Phi Alpha Gen President), OH Rep. Marcy Kaptur, Janet Garrett (candidate running against Freedom Caucus OH Rep. Jim Jordan), Prof. Lawrence Brown, MN Rep. Keith Ellison, Dr. Cornell West, movie Director/Producers, Michael Moore & Spike Lee, artist Shepard Fairey… You get the idea, we are just as much representative of America as HRC supporters, maybe more.
On the other hand, Hillary Rodham Clinton is definitely not a progressive although she repeatedly proclaims it. She wants to call her friends progressive too but no they just ain’t either.
In the first month of his campaign he ask for counsel & received strong support in HBCUs throughout the South.
Thank you. That’s exactly what I meant. I’m not telling anybody how to vote, but the fact is, the Hillary/Bernie divide cuts through all races, age groups, education levels, and other demographics, so the support at HBCUs shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Looks like Sanders supporters have the same list.
It’s truly impossible to do a parody.
Poe’s Law, indeed.
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The fact that a lot of PoC support Sanders obviously makes you really uncomfortable. So you have to belittle them, just like you belittle me.
No, really, do you cut and paste off the same master email? It has to be a little different, because he left out the whole ‘one out of four…’ part.
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Zombies rule Belgium.
I’ve never been a fan of the zombie genre. I just cannot get over the biology part of it. Which is odd because I read a lot of fantasy. Dragons? I’m in! Magic swords? Sign me up. So many good to great books out there.
But zombies? Meh. Vampires? Meh.
zombies
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This “NOT popular” candidate is winning by three million votes now and expected to be ahead by six million after June 7th. What the hell does it take to be popular in your view?
You don’t win a national election with primaries.
And you don’t win a national election by losing in the primaries.
No, but you might if you could run. Arguably Kasich might have been the GOP’s best candidate against “the Democrat.”
…especially primaries with only registered party faithful voting.
I agree, the almost visceral reactions to Bernie seem misplaced, I, for one, admit to a clear distrust of the DNC particularly in respect to donations a financial allocations. I don’t deflect that onto Dems I respect.
I have no idea what undercurrents lie between Obama & Clintons. But I know haven’t endeared themselves to me and my causes since their years in the WH. My respect for Bernie, however, has been steady for decades.
Hillary ended up in that “position” because for years she has cultivated the Democratic party. She took (or was given) SOS to further her ambition to be the first female president, which has been obvious since before 2008. She also happens to be qualified for the job and has convinced many who have worked with her that she is prepared for it, better than anyone else.
Booman doesn’t dislike Sanders. He says he voted for him. He just doesn’t think he should be president. And for me, this type of behavior and the ranting and raving proves that he’s not the guy to carry the message. He did great getting this far, but he can’t carry it over the finish line. I think it’s time to find the next person to carry the sustained message over the finish line in the future. That’s what’s frustrating here. There is a long game, but the Bernie or Bust people are only playing the short game, or so it seems to me.
He really does dislike Sanders. He voted for him, yes, because he couldn’t justify not voting for him. He has said that he supports most of Sanders’s positions. But he really doesn’t like him.
Where do you get this shit from?
I’m guessing that The Magic Eight Ball said, “Yes, most definitely”.
I am not the only one here that got that impression. But, as I said earlier, I stand corrected. You just have a funny way of showing it, that’s all.
He sees all. He knows what’s in your mind and heart, and you don’t. His declarations of whom you do or don’t like are therefore authoritative. Yours don’t matter.
QED
You’re a brown nose, you know that?
i dont know if booman likes sanders or not but i cant stand him. he disgusts me. i find him to be a total fraud. i find his dismissiveness of women including his wife very off putting. i dont like his demeanor. i dont like his sour puss bitter beer face. i dont like him. but if he was the best candidate i would vote for him. he isnt.
who exactly do you think could have beaten hillary clinton if the dnc wasnt tipping the scales for her?
i think you totally underestimate that a large majority of people genuinely like/love/support/admire and want to vote for her. they WANT her to be the next president.
It’s probably impossible for reality to penetrate the thickness of some people’s skulls, but the process involves selecting delegates. In Nevada, the problem was that Sanders couldn’t overcome losing the actual votes and win more delegates anyway by gaming the convention system. That was supposed to be an outrage.
Now I am supposed to weep for him that he lost zero delegates at all in Kentucky?
Make up your mind?
Do we count all the votes cast on election day or do we select delegates according to the arcane rules of each state, which have only an indirect relationship in many cases to the actual vote?
Which is the correct way? What’s more Democratic?
In any case, there are no delegates at stake here and it’s absurd to focus on counting every vote in a system that never gave a shit about every vote. The split is 27-27, and if Sanders wins the last delegate, he’ll get one more despite losing the state. And that’s how it’s supposed to be, because it’s not about one person/one vote in the primaries.
The issue is very simple. You see it as a quantitiative question of mileage, advantage, profit. What’s the gain? Anything else offends your puritan sense of cost-benefit rationality, so it’s nothing but grandstanding and trolling.
Sanders and others see it as a matter of principle. A recount isn’t just about numbers, it’s also a check to find out whether everything was done properly. Maybe so, but there are good reasons to doubt that. But we need to find out. In a case like this, it’s reasonable, morally justified, and sanctioned by law.
That is so braindead that I don’t even know what to say.
It’s based on a complete, total, misconception of the delegate process works.
It’s a misconception that has been aided by the media and by how people are led to believe democracy should work, and it’s our job to educate people about how things actually work.
Barack Obama beat Clinton in 2008 because his people figured out simple things like it was no use to campaign or canvass in congressional districts with an even number of available delegates because they’d be assigned evenly even if he won. Clinton’s team wasn’t that sophisticated, and it cost them over and over again, as Obama consistently poached more delegates than “democracy” would have awarded him.
He got as many net delegates out of Idaho as she got out of New Jersey, and spent millions less doing it.
No one suggested that we needed to recount New Jersey so Clinton might get one more delegate, and certainly not so she could get no more delegates.
Sanders and Clinton split Kentucky, and the delegate allocation reflects this. According to the rules, he might come out with one more delegate or one less, and it has nothing to do with who won the overall vote.
This is no different than countless congressional districts that have been split evenly despite one candidate clearly winning it.
You can not like the process, but this is just absurd to talk about how Clinton might have cheated to get zero delegates.
A recount does not assume that the opponent cheated. It just assumes the count may not have been accurate.
It IS absurd to think that, right, except that the polls had predicted a close race and she needed to be in the “win” column. But I don’t claim to know what happened.
She didn’t “need” anything. She hasn’t “needed” anything in two months.
Yes, she liked being able to say that she won Kentucky and it gave her a little break from negative news coverage and blunted her loss later in the night in Oregon. But it was all surface and no substance.
Like I said, they tied in Kentucky, just like they tied in Illinois and Missouri.
Try absorbing the idea that the votes don’t get counted to break such ties.
This exchange between Booman and priscianus does a good job of highlighting the way that people can start from the same point but reach radically different conclusions owing to their value systems. Booman points out over and over that demanding a recount in Kentucky will make no difference to the delegate count; priscianus says, that’s irrelevant, this is a matter of principle. Neither one is ever going to persuade the other.
It seems pretty clear that Sanders shares a value system with priscianus. He therefore demands a recount. Booman seems to think that doing so amounts to cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.
True.
OK then, you’ve made your point. People who share your value system will agree with you, those who don’t will probably agree with Booman.
What I find myself thinking about here is the concept of a pyrrhic victory. Why would the Sanders campaign intentionally aim for that?
It’s you guys that are blowing this out of proportion. Qualitatively the issue is as you describe it, but I don’t see all the either/ors or terrible cosmic consequences of getting a recount.
If there was potential terrible cosmic consequences, I could at least understand the point. This is just a waste of time and money. Some of us find that objectionable.
No, you didn’t understand what i said. I don’t see the teerrible cosmic consequences of getting a recount, or actually, a recanvassing.
What anegadagino said resonates.
If you have a long game, then you should not do things that hurt that long game. This does not benefit Sanders, and is a waste of time and money.
To me, this just another sign that Sanders has conceded. It ties in with his picks for the party platform. Why accept 5 if you truly believe you can get 6?
.
A value system based on an a delusion isn’t the same as looking at things for what they are.
It’s not just that it can make no difference. It’s actually based on the misperception that delegates are awarded based on an absolutely accurate tally of the vote.
Look, say Hillary really won Kentucky. I know that’s a radical idea, but let’s just say that she did.
Why isn’t she upset that she didn’t get any net delegates out of winning?
It’s not just because it doesn’t matter.
It’s also because that’s how all of these states work. A huge chunk of them actually have the delegates selected later, as in Nevada, after local and state conventions.
So, to even suggest that there is some principle involved here is misleading and carrying on a misconception that needs to be eradicated, not bolstered.
matters of principle? where were sander’s principles when he wasnt paying child support for his son? where were his principles when he supported the development of the burlington waterfront into condos against the wishes of the community? where were his principles when he supported sending nuke waste to texas? where were his principles when he voted for the aumf? where were his principles when he voted against the brady bill? where were his principles when he supported 1 trillion for lockheed martin to build a jet that still doesnt work and is already obsolete? where were his principles when lady jane took home a $200,000 golden parachute after being fired for sending burlington college into such a financial mess they had to close? how many times has sanders complained about failed CEOs getting rewarded when they get fired but not a word when it was the wife? first sanders said the super delegates were an abomination now he wants to use them to thwart the will of the people. what kind of principles are these?
Where are the tax returns, Bernie?
Haven’t we seen those already? Or are you confusing him with Donald Trump, which would be inexcusable?
no we haven’t. We saw one year – 2014 and that is all.
I didn’t know that, yes, that might raise some legitimate questions.
That’s right. As I understand it, Jane’s been busy.
and they have no copy machines on the trail.
Or access to turbotax, apparently.
not even one year. it was just a review.
Of course, Bernie is fighting for every vote, every delegate…the very nature of his campaign is for the examination of the very system of our democracy. DWS & HRC are fighting for their election (for example, choosing to not debate in CA). Quite a different goal.
In regard to elections, If anyone does not comprehend that the electoral system is neither safe and secure from deliberate fraud, not to mention unnoted, unexplained ‘snafus’, you are naive. Democrats who deny this and suggest it is a conspiracy theory, either know the Dem Party can use these same machinations in their favor or innocently believe the results of presidential of 2000 election was a best possible outcome.
My problem with this post is that I have not yet been able to figure out the meaning of ‘troll’, apart from the traditional kind that lives in caves or the like.
Apparently you’re not aware of all internet traditions.
A troll is someone who disagrees with you.
A troll can be quite insane or be on the payroll of a political contender. I have been called a troll. You can be one too. Just disagree.
I have often wondered, what with our intelligence community being in both the blanket surveillance spying industry as well as the propaganda industry, how many trolls are gainfully employed and operating in cubicles of federal institutions.
A troll isn’t just someone who disagrees with you. A troll is someone who is deliberately harassing you, usually ad hominem, ridiculing and using insulting, demeaning, or abusive language, and not contributing anything substantive to the discussion. And typically they just won’t quit.
But like everything else, the word troll can be used metaphorically, and I don’t believe Booman meant it literally.
Don’t omit the attempt to psychoanalyze people you disagree with from your lofty perch, like their behavior needs to be explained by some emotional dysfunction.
Yeah, that’s always a good one.
I still don’t get it. What does it mean that ‘Sanders is just trolling’?
It doesn’t mean anything. It gave an ugly tone to this whole thrad, and things took off from there.
¡Bernado! ¡Unido¡ ¡Jamás será vencido!
De pie, cantar
que vamos a triunfar.
Avanzan ya
banderas de unidad.
Um, Bernardo is a single individual, how can he be “unido”?
Still, sort of clever.
Now this is what I call professional-level trolling
How are all the Trump voters going to respond if you keep writing in “Mexican”?
With crayon in their padded cells of course.
[snark off]
no really [snark off]
Eh, who knows. Maybe those on the ground in KY feel especially strongly about this and Sanders is doing it to address any irregularities (real or perceived) they feel existed. It doesn’t seem to be that big a deal to me, and the potential upside is increased accuracy/transparency into the voting process, which is a good thing.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/16/clinton-does-best-where-voting-machines-flunk-hacking-tests-h
illary-clinton-vs-bernie-sanders-election-fraud-allegations/
“This isn’t adult behavior.”
Yes, it is.
Absolutely adult!