That sounds like a great strategy for giving Trump a 2nd term.
If you want to talk about false equivalence, look at all of the accusations of Bernie & supporters being racist, sexist and/or violent, attempting to link them to stereotypical trump voters.
I don’t think anyone was saying that Hillary was as corrupt as Trump, or even the normal GOP. This doesn’t mean people weren’t concerned about how close she was to certain special interest groups though.
It may surprise you guys, but some people are concerned when they see special interests groups shoveling money in to the hands of politicians. Investors don’t generally just throw money away, they invest in things that provide returns.
Voting for Hillary was, by an order of magnitude, the most I’ve agonized over a vote.
I knew that Trump would be a complete a disaster. I thought Trump had a shot of winning.
My hot button item is foreign policy, and I felt that Hillary would do a decent to a good job, much better than Obama.
. For the last 4 elections I voted for almost 1/2 Democrats despite disagree them on a lot of policy issues. In no case, were their opponents nearly as horrible as Trump. But still I hated having to vote for Hillary, a woman of such lower character and no charisma.
Speaking of false equivalences, did Hillary Clinton make any of these unfair accusations? Because LMN8R seemed to direct his anger at Bernie Sanders, the person, not Bernie Sanders, the political brand espoused by internet posters.
And when talking about stuff that Bernie said, I can’t help think back to the statements like this made by Bernie Sanders, the actual person, on actual TV and in actual newspapers:
[quote=Bernie Sanders April 6 2016]Now the other day, I think, Secretary Clinton appeared to be getting a little bit nervous. We have won, we have won seven out of eight of the recent primaries and caucuses. And she has been saying lately that she thinks that I am, quote unquote, not qualified to be president.
Well let me, let me just say in response to Secretary Clinton: I don’t believe that she is qualified, if she is, through her super PAC, taking tens of millions of dollars in special interest funds. I don’t think you are qualified if you get $15 million from Wall Street through your super PAC.[/quote]
That part about how Hillary Clinton called him “quote unquote, not qualified to be president” was made up. And the stated basis of this criticism, taking campaign money from Wall Street, would also have disqualified Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, so it’s pretty quixotic. But for some reason Donald Trump failed to bring up all of this important context when he kept bringing up how Bernie Sanders said she wasn’t qualified to be President:
(By the way, the “confused and meandering” part of Trump’s argument was how Trump kept reffering back to what Bernie Sanders said instead of giving any independent reason for his views. Which, with the benefit hindsight, was sort of brilliant.)
Bernie Sanders is directly responsible for spreading lies that Donald Trump made a significant part of his campaign. He’s a fucking asshole for at, and he continues to be an asshole for attacking Obama for living the life he deserves to as a private citizen.
I agree with you about Obama. He is hell of speaker, I remember Colin Powell use to get $250,000 right after the first Gulf War and he was great speaker also.
But I don’t think it is all fair to criticize Bernie for say negative things about Hillary, he was trying to win a primary and one of the ways you do that is to say negative things about your opponent. As primary battles go, Bernie had far more of a positive message promising all the free things that he would give people by I guess taking money from than banks, than a negative message attacking Hillary. Hillary attacked Obama far more than Bernie attacked Hillary. Hillary’s clips of Obama lacking the experience to be President were a staple of John McCain’s attack ads.
If anything I said Bernie was tough enough on Hillary, giving her a free pass on the email servers. It’s my biggest criticism of the Republican race this year, we all knew there was horrible shit that Trump said out there. I always wonder if the pussy grabbing video came early during the primary if Trump would be President.
Ok, I get that but if you would have asked DNC folks at the beginning how many votes Bernie would get, I think you’d get a few raised eyebrows like you’d be crazy for suggesting he’d get any.
He did make it a race. So perhaps I used a bad word in using “almost won”, and I think that was due to the momentum he gained. He lost it in the first few weeks, but he didn’t stop trying & won a LOT of states.
I put more of that blame on Hillary than Bernie, and even if Trump was a more corrupt elite , Hillary was also corrupt as hell, and the symbol of something Americans despise at this point.
Also, let’s be blunt, Bernie Sanders is more popular among Democrats than the Democratic Party itself is popular among Dems (this is what many opinion polls post-election have said, the Dems themselves are not well-liked). He’s saying what people want the Dems to say, even if not everyone likes Bernie personally (and I have my issues with him).
The 2020 primary is going to be a war for the soul of the Democrats. If they fail to choose wisely, any victory over Trump is going to be short-lived,because the Dems do need a new message.
The fact that Hillary folks on here are trying to blame Bernie still states how out of touch with reality they are, and it’s that arrogant, entitled attitude that got us Donald Trump.
My Hillary vote was not because of anything she did- my vote was entirely against the Republican party and entirely in spite of her. I can understand why many I know decided to stay home- they’re not as anti-Republican as I am because I follow this crap more than they do.
As far as I’m concerned, Hillary made Dukakis look like a great candidate.
I agree with most everything you said, but this. I voted affirmatively for Clinton because, despite her flaws, she was many things I want in a politician. Well read, knowledgeable, articulate, intelligent. Whether I agreed with her position or not, I could be confident her position was well researched and based on a solid rational basis. Really that is about the highest praise I can give when it comes to public policy.
But that does not obviate the fact that she, and the DNC in general, treated the election as her birthright, basically. The fact so many of you are more interested in blaming Bernie than anything Hillary did belies that you believe that any challenge to her was fundamentally illegitimate. Are you so quick to forget that the '08 race between her and Obama got heated? That they went after eachother? Rather than gripe about how Bernie pointed out flaws, either in her policy or perceptions of her personality, how about complaining that Clinton’s campaign was aware of these flaws and chose to ignore them? You act like the fact weaknesses were shown means that the problem was Bernie pointed them out. Lest you forget the media was more than happy to go after Bernie by treating every proposal of his as fantasy, ignoring that they worked in other countries.
I mean, jesus, the lack of introspection is dumbfounding. Yes Clinton was the better, more qualified, more deserving candidate. But the sheer arrogance at points is astounding. When you have a weakness shown, don’t blame the person who exposed it during the primary, HE DID YOU A SERVICE! Find ways to counter that for the general election. If you are percieved as being in the pocket of certain interests, have your campaign figure out how to counter that claim. You’ve got 6 months, get to work. Find ways to make those things your strength.
Everything was a factor. Yes the Comey letter probably was enough to tip the final result. It was likely the conclusive factor, combined with wikileaks, to eek just enough for 100k people in just the right states to flip the election. Yes the media treated her seriously and Trump not so, giving her far more critical coverage. Yes voter suppression in states like Wisconsin and North Carolina almost certainly had material impacts on the race. Certainly the sexism and lies of 25 years of the right wing hate machine played a role in driving down her polling numbers. All those things are true. But that some people are more interested in placing blame at Bernie than the anointed one? It shows the DNC is truly lost.
Ignore the energy and enthusiasm from the left wing of the party at your deep peril.
The Fuck Bernie thing is crazy. Bernie Sanders told you all why Clinton was going to lose to Donald Fucking Trump, he said it over a year before it happened and he kept saying it up until everyone told him to shut up because we wanted to pretend there was no way Trump could win.
If you want to win elections, listen to Bernie Sanders. The biggest problem in the country is the greed of the 1%. Literally every other problem can be traced back to that.
But you know what if Obama wants to take the bankers money and donate it to poor kids we’re still cool. I wonder if he did that because Bernie and Warren spoke up, and regular people started getting upset, or if that was the plan all along?
The thing was, I think Hillary in a vacuum would have been good. This wasn’t a vacuum, and she had a ton of things working against her. Also I don’t think she could counter her weaknesses, they were way too entrenched- this is why I would have voted any other Dem in the primary- I thought Hillary was fatally flawed as a candidate and would lose to any Republican , except Trump. I think if it was someone other than Trump it would have been a landslide.
My former commander even vouched for her competence, but he voted against both of them.
As for Obama, I think it was his plan all along- I give him the benefit of the doubt. He’s done nothing to show my otherwise.
There’s no evidence for this. They raised a lot of money for charity, but there’s no evidence that any of the Clinton’s benefited personally from their fund. Unless you mean, “she got paid to give speeches to people Bernie hates.” In which case, you’re setting the bar really low for ‘corrupt as hell.’
I agree she was an awful candidate. Regardless of whether it’s fair, you shouldn’t run when half the country thinks you’re despicable. All the more so if you simply lack the skillset to connect to folks on TV. Intelligence matters, but charisma matters more in our system. She lacks it.
