HRC is a corporatist and Bernie is not. HRC wants the status quo. Bernie sees that this economy isn't working for the average person. I reluctantly voted for Hillary but whole heartedly supported Bernie in the primary. Our party needs to return to its way of championing the working class,

Just my opinion as to why Hillary lost and I think we do need to talk about this as a party. The neo-liberals have taken over the party of the working people and we need to take it back.

all this plus a little lingering anger over Hillary and the DNC's moves against Bernie. There a bunch here that think Bernie's populist message would have resonated better in the states that cost us the election. I definitely feel that way.

You can divide and divide and divide until we are fractured into grains of sand.

I say this as a person whose views have been heavily influenced by Chomsky and Naomi Klein... who went door to door for Bernie and donated way too much to his campaign.

As an older person who lived through the NAFTA years, I thought globalization was great in my 20s and early 30s, and in my 40s I recognized the consequences and would have favored a reversal, and I despised "corporatist". In my 50s now I see how wide ranging the views of my fellow Americans are, and I accept that good is NOT the enemy of best. Good is sometimes all you can get. Obama is essentially a corporatist -- but he has been a wonderful president in so many ways.

How do we get the Democratic Party to be less corporate centered, or less hawkish?

Democrats are leaving Party leadership positions in droves because they know what is coming. Your Progressives/populists won. Be happy with that.

Corporatists, oligarchs, status quo, establishment
Oh my, the Dems arent the party of the working class anymore. Ewwwww.
Run arouned in circles with our hair on fire
Blah blah blah

And now you have t-rump
Just get our side to bother showing up to vote, which come to think or it, if everyone stopped with nonsensical generalizations, perhaps they would again

Also, it is the racist, sexist, homophobic attacks on "identity politics" as some sort of scapegoat reason for Hillary's loss. Sanders did it himself!! Oh, identity politics did play a huge role, WHITE identity politics from Camp Dogwhistle.

Like I have said in the past, a lot of economic development talk that is now YEARS off in the future doesn't mean shit to a PoC, an LGBTQ, or a woman when you have motherfuckers now fully in power who want to ERASE US.

or BoBs need to be quiet about identity politics.

Nothing is guaranteed.

Issue 1.

Taxes pure and simple

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/3/25/11293258/tax-plan-calculator-2016

I took the median (NOT average, so no artificially high number due to the 1%'ers blowing up the average) 2015 USA household income 54,462

I set it for a married couple with a child

and this is what you get



Under Bernie they would pay ALMOST 7000 USD MORE per year than under Hillary and 10,000 MORE than Trump

Now I do it for a single person making 25,000



2600 USD MORE per year than Clinton's plan and 4700 USD MORE than under trump


a poor single person 15,000 USD a year



1600 USD MORE under Sanders than Clinton, and almost 2500 USD MORE than under Trump


and finally an upper middle class family

combined household income of 125,000 (and THIS is millions of suburban voters of all races, etc) with multiple children



They would pay 16,500 USD MORE under Bernie than Clinton, and 23 THOUSAND DOLLARS more under Bernie than under Trump


THAT WOULD HAVE CRUSHED HIM IN THE GENERAL

no one can ever convince otherwise




Issue 2.

He falsely labels himself a "Democratic Socialist"


This may seem a bit pedantic, BUT is ultimately massive in terms of impacting and framing the entire concept of the "left" in the United States.

Bernie SELF-LABELS himself as a democratic socialist. I go crazy when I see this, because he is NOT a democratic socialist and it automatically feeds the American culture's knee jerk, reactionary, stupid, thuggish tendency to equate communism with socialism through a totally sloppy, outdated Cold War prism. This gives every reactionary Rethug a huge target to blow him out of the water. This also feeds bullshit myths in the USA that everything that works for a democratic social good is by definition "commie" or "socialist." It is utterly false and self-defeating on a grand scale. It literally has corrupted and perverted almost all right-v-left framing of all political discourse in America.

I explain what I mean by a mislabel by cheating a bit and using that bane of serious academic rigour, Wikipedia. I will use wikipedia because it neatly describes EXACTLY what I am saying.

Bernie is a practitioner of SOCIAL DEMOCRACY, so he is a social democrat, so to speak, similar in many aspects to Sweden and other countries in the Nordic Model. He does NOT espouse a democratic form of socialism, thus he is NOT a democratic socialist.


Democratic socialism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism

Not to be confused with social democracy.

Democratic socialism is a political ideology that advocates political democracy alongside social ownership of the means of production, often with an emphasis on democratic management of enterprises within a socialist economic system. The term "democratic socialism" is sometimes used synonymously with "socialism"; the adjective "democratic" is often added to distinguish it from the Marxist–Leninist brand of socialism, which is widely viewed as being non-democratic in practice. Democratic socialism is also sometimes used as a synonym for Social Democracy, although many say this is misleading as democratic socialism advocates social ownership of the means of production, whereas social democracy does not.

Democratic socialism is distinguished from both the Soviet model of centralized socialism and from social democracy, where "social democracy" refers to support for political democracy, nationalization of key industries, and a welfare state. The distinction with the former is made on the basis of the authoritarian form of government and centralized economic system that emerged in the Soviet Union during the 20th century, while the distinction with the latter is made on the basis that democratic socialism is committed to systemic transformation of the economy while social democracy is not. That is, whereas social democrats only seek to "humanize" capitalism through state intervention, democratic socialists see capitalism as inherently incompatible with the democratic values of liberty, equality and solidarity; and believe that the issues inherent to capitalism can only be solved by superseding private ownership with some form of social ownership. Ultimately democratic socialists believe that reforms aimed at addressing the economic contradictions of capitalism will only cause more problems to emerge elsewhere in the economy, that capitalism can never be sufficiently "humanized", and that it must therefore ultimately be replaced with socialism.

Democratic socialism is not specifically revolutionary or reformist, as many types of democratic socialism can fall into either category, with some forms overlapping with social democracy, supporting reforms within capitalism as a prelude to the establishment of socialism. Some forms of democratic socialism accept social democratic reformism to gradually convert the capitalist economy to a socialist one using pre-existing democratic institutions, while other forms are revolutionary in their political orientation and advocate for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the transformation of the capitalist economy to a socialist economy.


snip



Social democracy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy

Social democracy is a political, social and economic ideology that supports economic and social interventions to promote social justice within the framework of a capitalist economy; and a policy regime involving collective bargaining arrangements, a commitment to representative democracy, measures for income redistribution, regulation of the economy in the general interest and welfare state provisions. Social democracy thus aims to create the conditions for capitalism to lead to greater democratic, egalitarian and solidaristic outcomes; and is often associated with the set of socioeconomic policies that became prominent in Northern and Western Europe—particularly the Nordic model in the Nordic countries—during the latter half of the 20th century.

Social democracy originated as a political ideology that advocated an evolutionary and peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism using established political processes in contrast to the revolutionary approach to transition associated with orthodox Marxism. In the early post-war era in Western Europe, social democratic parties rejected the Stalinist political and economic model then current in the Soviet Union, committing themselves either to an alternate path to socialism or to a compromise between capitalism and socialism. In this period, social democrats embraced a mixed economy based on the predominance of private property, with only a minority of essential utilities and public services under public ownership. As a result, social democracy became associated with Keynesian economics, state interventionism, and the welfare state, while abandoning the prior goal of replacing the capitalist system (factor markets, private property and wage labor) with a qualitatively different socialist economic system.

Modern social democracy is characterized by a commitment to policies aimed at curbing inequality, oppression of underprivileged groups, and poverty; including support for universally accessible public services like care for the elderly, child care, education, health care, and workers' compensation. The social democratic movement also has strong connections with the labour movement and trade unions, and is supportive of collective bargaining rights for workers as well as measures to extend democratic decision-making beyond politics into the economic sphere in the form of co-determination for employees and other economic stakeholders.

snip



Bernie Sanders does NOT want to replace all private ownership of the means of production with government or social ownership! Therefore he fundamentally is NOT a Socialist.


He is committing political suicide in a reactionary capitalistic country like America by calling himself a democratic socialist. It is MADDENING to me, and almost all my fellow Europeans I know. The actual socialists, REAL socialists, I know detest when he labels himself a socialist.

His taxes would have hit middle class folks.

He also jumbled up scandinavian model ideas with ours without understanding the pillars upon which Scandinavian prosperity was possible.

I'm sorry if this sounds horrible or harsh (I genuinely don't mean it to), but the simple truth from this election was that unless your platform caters to the masses, you're not going to win elections. If you know anything about Bernie, you already know he cares deeply (and has done for his entire adult life) about minority and gender rights. He's put his career at risk countless times standing up for those most in need of help, so any narrative that suggests he'd suddenly not give a damn in office is just nonsensical.

He put forward a reasonable (but certainly arguable) position that economic growth would help minority communities overcome some of the historical problems of weath inequality, and over time these would help remove some of the contributing causes of discrimination. I actually still think that is true, however as people from the black community pointed out to him, the immediately issues around racial justice are too important and can't be solved by such long term economic thinking. They were right, but that doesn't mean his initial position was completely wrong either.

What makes me both sad and angry however was the response to those discussions. How did he respond to that information from the black community? Simple, he rebuilt his entire position taking into account what he had learned, and putting racial justice as a major pillar of his platform. What was the response from the media and many here? Exactly the kind of thing you just posted. As if he'd turned around and ignored the issue, when in fact he listened, learned and embraced.

This might not be important to you, but this kind of thing is exactly why there's such a divide between the primary camps here. It's sometimes like we saw two completely different versions of reality.

I assumed that was obvious by the sentence:

"Oh, identity politics did play a huge role, WHITE identity politics from Camp Dogwhistle."

Bernie NEVER race baited, he just, post election, sorta dismissed us by saying "We need to get beyond identity politics."

Long term (which post 2016 IS the reality) economic benefits mean little to PoC, women, LGBTQ, when you have a fully erected, systemically dominant political power structure (that has majorities at every level from to state to national) that wants to ERASE us.

I probably need more sleep. Or wine. Awesome work on being a Chelsea fan by the way!

Yes, there will be some who insist on doing this again and again, and go to bed at night cursing Hillary for their reason-of-the-week.

I skip over any post dissing Hillary Clinton featuring the following terms:

Establishment
Oligarchy
Corporate/corporatist
Liar/Untrustworthy

They have no more relevance to me than Fox Noise rantings about "libbruls."

I don't keep a full list taped to my screen, but I know the BS indicators when I see them.

We have a choice between hawkish pro Wall Street Democrats who oppose single payer and won't do jack shit about climate change, or someone who gives a shit about the little person and the planet. Don't 3rd way splain that progressives should keep blindly voting for 3rd way.

Our best chance for single payer was in 2009. We need to hold those who failed to fight for it accountable.

...it yet. Still thinks it's viable.
We have seen , given a choice between a Pubbie and a blue dog, voters tend to elect the Pubbie.
We have seen the Democratic Progressive Caucus shunted to the side, year after year. It's is very apparent money has corrupted all the parties. We have seen from Sanders' grassroot funding support and Stein's recount fundraising that if you have a compelling message, folks will donate and support you big time, so courting big donors isn't the only way to raise campaign cash.

Having a resonating message does. We better look to the Congressional Progressive Caucus for that message, cause the rest of our messaging, is not getting the job done.

Football is the best comparison. The backup QB is always the fan favorite who could do no wrong if he just got to play. The reason he's the backup is ignored. That's Bernie.

I don't think we are all on the same side. If we were, Hillary would be president elect. There are lots of third party voters and election day no shows who are insisting they are some how "right" because Trump is president elect. They fail to see what is obvious to most: the "never Hillary" cohort was a major factor in putting Trump in office.

These people weren't "right"; they were ruthless narcissists who made a threat and carried it out. Clinton, Obama, and Sanders himself begged them not to do it, and the Trump team played them for all it was worth. Now they're bewildered by the anger and contempt of the 65,000,000 who (among others) will have to live with the consequences of those who were so pure that they could not vote for a woman who was eminently qualified, whose proposals did not ignore already marginalized demographics, and whose record for for liberalism matched that of a certain fiery progressive from Vermont. They will however, turn a blind eye to the environmentalist abuses of Sierra Blanca and the the broken promises concerning the single payer fight of 2008-2009.

And to add insult to injury, we have to listen to the post-campaign obnoxious pontifications on an almost daily basis of a man who was largely absent when Democrats needed him because he now has a book to sell.

If we were truly all on the same side, we would be reading about the first woman president's transition and first 100 days of enacting the most progressive platform in decades. Unfortunately, whether by accident or design, some of "us" threw the game to Team Trump.

We told them it would happen, and they did it anyway.

Last edited Wed Dec 7, 2016, 01:12 PM - Edit history (2)

as a Hillary supporter, so I know what she and we did for Obama in the general. The closest analog we have to this election occurred in 2000 when Nader played the spoiler for the purists who cast environmental activist and Nobel Peace prize winner Al Gore in the role of "the lesser of two evils"

You don't get to define what I think or what "people like me" prefer. There's lots of spinning going on in certain quarters, but people cannot change uncomfortable facts. Voters who had genuine problems with newly enacted suppression measures were counting on us to do the right thing. (I know this because I spent weekends in PA re-registering voters who had been thrown off the rolls due to new laws that resulted from the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, and working out election day voting plans with working class and working poor party members.)

Third party voters and no shows threw this election to the Republicans who came home and voted with their party.

Third party voters and those who were not "inspired enough" to fulfill a civic duty could have been heroes, but they chose to be spoilers. And we all have to live with the consequences.

a few days after the election.

“He (Trump) talked about raising the minimum wage to $10,” Sanders said. “That’s not high enough for me, but it’s better than $7.25 an hour, and we look forward to working with him to raise the minimum wage.”

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/monitor_breakfast/2016/1117/Sen.-Bernie-Sanders-It-s-time-for-Democratic-soul-searching

i don't think so. Bashing any DEMOCRAT is against the TOS and who so does that gets reported.

NO BASHING. Just don't do it.

It's so nonproductive and unfair after the fact for people to say Hillary did a bad job with the campaign or whatever.

I went door to door for Bernie, and donated, but appreciated the extent of inclusion of his supporters at the convention, and the platform. I thought Hillary ran a very good campaign.

I did have concerns during the primaries that Bernie had a better chance to beat any Republican, and some people want to keep bringing those questions up. We will never know the answer to that, and it doesn't matter now. I believe she did her best, and I also believe that it was Republican voter suppression and possibly election fraud that caused the outcome. She was in the ring fighting the good fight. She would have been a good president.

It's human nature to find someone to blame. I've never had that propensity, myself,, but many do. It sucks.

There is absolutely nothing new about the Berni=Good / Hillary=Bad stance at DU. And until the site administrators see fit to shut down the 2016 Postmortem forum, it's not going away.

they have not left their bunker and have nothing new to say.

Apparently it's lost that one redeeming quality--keeping those guys over there

It's time to shut the forum down and move to the future. Enough of the past.

Thanks for your contribution.

I wonder if we will start to heal or go off a cliff after the inauguration?

Because, you know, all they do is hurt the front-runner.

But there is something wrong when someone joins our party as a spoiler and to use for money and attention. We are talking about a guy who had already spent a bunch of time bashing one of the best presidents in history. And he then went on to bash the most competent person to ever run for president in my lifetime far after he was out of the running. All to stir up some "revolution" (to stoke his ego?) while managing nothing more than to create a massive division within the party and stupidly give the Republicans and media nothing but negative sound bites to use after she kicked his ass thoroughly in the primaries. BoBers and all their lame ass transparent excuses will be on my shit list til the day I die.

Hillary didn't need a coronation. The party didn't need to skip the primary. She won quite handily. What we needed was a fucking statesman who had enough respect for the voters of the party he used and the future of our country to step aside and have the decency not to throw a fucking maltov cocktail onto a pile of bullshit lies and propaganda.

Is it any surprise that we may have trolls among us who are still attempting to keep us divided?

When those championing Bernie can - even at this late date - look at the unapologetic fascist backed by the Nazis and the KKK and still think of the candidate opposing him who shared their position on 99% of the issues is the "lesser of two evils".

We're not on the same side.

"Stronger Apart!"

Sanders? The selective outrage continues from people on both sides. At the very least, I appreciate how your post resolves though. That note is struck far less commonly on this board. Case in point, just read the respondents on this thread. Its an arms race on both sides.

slithering their way back here after leaving here in a fake-outrage huff. Wish they'd go back there.

I'm a Democrat because of my progressive, liberal views and beliefs, not the other way around. I couldn't care less how long Bernie was or was not a Democrat. He has voted with the Democrats faithfully except when they were appeasing the Republicans. IMO, he has stronger support for Democratic (and democratic) values than a lot of Lifelong Dems.

Thank you, trueblue

They are both good. Hillary did her best, and Bernie enlivened the politics of the campaign.

It seems to me that some people are emotionally charged by one or both of these former candidates.

Neither or them are candidates at this time. I get that individuals have their critique of the former candidates' actions and words. I don't think this is just a matter of some people being critical of Clinton - I think that some people have also been critical of Sanders.

I have seen many posts complaining about Bernie Bros running threads that attack Hillary, but I see relatively few threads that fit the description. There seem to be many warnings about this horrible danger that doesn't exist.

High. We took a major hit.