The election is over

A lot of the wrong lessons have been learned (to the extent that anything has been learned at all).

On the republicans and their gerrymandering, voter suppression, the MSM, Comey, Putin....etc. The right is ruthless and they'll do anything to win. We have find a way to combat them.

If there was theft, hillary left it close enough to steal. So no she was far from perfect.

That said these threads just invite flame wars.

that she got more votes than Sanders.


Sid

Besides, gerrymandering doesn't effect Presidential elections, only House seats.

EOM

Democrats need to work harder at framing their policies on moral grounds.

I'm disappointed when I hear candidates like Sanders talking about issues like income inequality in a fact-based manner, but less frequently arguing against it on moral grounds. There's many people in this country who don't see anything wrong with some people becoming super-rich, especially since there's many Republicans who will gladly argue that those people "deserve" and "earned" it.

In the same way that environmentalists argue that businesses avoid "hidden costs" of their pollution and they should be held responsible for it, there's all kinds of other "hidden costs" that USA businesses avoid -- e.g., wanting better educated employees from whom the owners will extract the most benefit, but the employees usually pay for it and get deeply in debt over it.

Last edited Mon Dec 26, 2016, 08:59 PM - Edit history (1)

that's the problem: they often don't.

And there's a lot of legal ways where shit's rigged to favor big wealth; look at the tax code.

When capital gains are taxed far less than labor, there's a problem. It's backwards, investment income should be taxed more. And there should be a small new tax on stock transactions. Claw back a few bucks off of computerised, high volume trading.

I think most of the big wealth in this country is ownership-related, usually with some document declaring such-and-such person owns this or that.

Nikola Tesla made a huge contribution to society with his AC motor invention, but he died penniless. He had sold the "legal right" of the invention to a wealthy investor named Westinghouse!

I like Bill Gates' liberal qualities and altruism, but I'll use him as an example too.

He didn't create DOS. He bought it from someone else, and thus had the ownership rights of it per a contract. He then got a great contract with IBM, retaining ownership of the software in a virtual monopoly when they came out with their PC's. Once that money rolled in, he could hire many people far more skilled than him!

I saw Bill Gates on some computer trivia show on TV many years ago, and he didn't know the answers to some questions that I thought were easy! Yet my only computer background was just a few programming classes toward a mathematics degree!

Bill's father used to be a contract lawyer.

Anyway, I'm not proposing a disruption of government-enforced contracts because they obviously serve an important purpose in a civilized society. It just irks me how often the "ownership class" in this country avoids various costs that they should be paying for their privilege as owners!

Yes, it's ridiculous that capital gains taxes are so low!

jobs and still barely scraping by while the 1%ers get tax breaks, etc etc. You don't view that as a moral argument?

I think his arguments are very moral.

I'm saying that some of his positions, and the positions of many Democrats, could sometimes be better framed as a moral argument.

EDIT:
Republican propagandists seem to do it more (using more child-like arguments).
Example: "Should people have their hard-earned money STOLEN from them to pay for (this or that)?"

... replied to?

If Sanders worded it that way, then I stand corrected. I never heard him frame income inequality that way.

American voters often need some ideas spoon fed to them. Assuming they'll make the connections on their own is folly.

EDIT: Read the last sentence as a moral argument for free college, linking it to a hidden cost that many business owners avoid paying as they get richer compared to others.

Take his proposals of a universal minimum income and free college and argue this way, linking it to the growing income inequality:

Does the military expect young recruits to be fully trained before they join? Do they expect them to support themselves while they get that training? Of course not! Our military isn't managed that way because it would be wrong! The military pays the recruits and pays for their training too because those are the skills they want for an efficient fighting machine! If corporations in this country aren't willing to directly pay for the subsistence and training of our new recruits in this battle of global free markets, then it's the task of government to make sure they pay through higher taxes! Money they should have been paying for years while they instead became richer compared to the rest of us!

He'd probably even convince some conservatives in the South with that one!

not paying workers for, and they should? This seems farther to the left than Sanders even is. You think that's a stronger moral arg. than simply saying in today's world a college education is needed to draw a living wage? I guess I'm not seeing that. Well, we need all of us in the tent to come up with better messaging ideas going forward, anyway, that's a given.

I personally thought Sanders went "too far" with his free college proposal, at least how he framed it. When I first heard it, my thought was, "I had to bust my butt to get my degree, working in all kinds of factory sweat shops to help put myself through! Then I still owed money! Now I'm going to pay for others to go to college free? What about all the people doing fine without a college degree? Most of the highly-paid managers at my factories never had a degree! I don't accept that it's necessary to make a living wage!"

If he'd better indicated who was going to pay for it, and why they SHOULD pay for it because they're the ones who WANT it, it would've made more sense to me.

Maybe he didn't make that point clearly enough. Certainly plenty of folks here mocked him about free college, maybe they thought they'd be paying for it.

Here are the terms in plain English, FWIW:
https://berniesanders.com/issues/its-time-to-make-college-tuition-free-and-debt-free/

I wasn't as informed as I should have been, educated more by TV sound bites on the Democratic side... and I didn't even vote in Ohio's primary! I didn't join DU until after the primaries too. I wasted more time "licking my chops" over Trump possibly winning the GOP nomination, which I assumed at the time would ultimately rip apart their party. I voted for Hillary in the GE (and all Democrats on the ballot without really knowing all of their positions either) as soon as I could, mostly because Trump was/is so disturbing!

I still prefer a "if corporations want it, they should pay for it" argument, but Wall Street speculators aren't far off the mark!

Well, welcome to DU, anyway. Stick around and you'll get a terrific education right here.

Better late than never to "Feel the Bern."

I admit that I became cynical when the more economically progressive candidates I liked in the past didn't do well in the Democratic primaries, and I pretty much accepted the neoliberal argument that they could never win. Meanwhile, progressive gains of the past just keep getting chipped away.

I plan to be more politically involved in the future... assuming we all survive Trump.

and logistics of his message.
You can always post your thoughts about the book after you read it, maybe more welcomed in the Bernie group here.

Thanks for the group suggestion!

BTW, I need to log off now. I'm telling you in case you send a quick reply with a question or something.

made him the advocate he has been for decades on income inequality. I suspect that some people are more comfortable speaking of things as "moral" or "immoral" than others. I also think that for community leaders and public officials there is less talk of religion, even as I see MORE actual demonstration that values matter in New England than in other areas I have lived in.

there were more Clinton supporters than Sanders supporters. You assume that if we had nominated Sanders that the Clinton supporters would have voted for Sanders. Sanders did poorly in most primaries with black and Hispanic voters. Who's to say those groups wouldn't have dipped in the general if the candidate they supported by wide margins was pushed aside for a candidate that received fewer votes? As it is, those two groups didn't really grow as a percentage of the overall electorate this time.

That said, I think the party should take a look at what motivated the Sanders supporters not just for future party platforms, but also for motivating those voters to vote in future elections, especially in down ticket races. And that does mean supporting more candidates in the mold of Sanders, particularly at the local level. Sanders started out as mayor and moved up. As the Green party shows, trying to just run for President isn't an effective strategy. In particular, I think California with the jungle primary system would be a great place to start running more Sanders like candidates.

As is the case with Trump, Sanders is not an ‘agent of change.’

The type of ‘change’ Sanders supporters sought would not have manifested had Sanders become president, and they would again have become alienated and disengaged – which is childish and ridiculous.

voted for Hillary in the General. Bernie's policies are what used to be mainstream Democratic core beliefs.

While any Democratic President would have had to fight an uphill battle to get their agenda through Congress, Bernie planned to use the Bully Pulpit to organize and direct us to put pressure on Congress to pass his agenda. He would have kept us all engaged and actually grow the movement once the media would have to give him coverage as President. He would have educated all Americans as to the effects of our corrupt campaign finance system, which is the cause of most of our problems.

Hillary would have made a great President, but Bernie was the one who had the plans to change the system. At the very least he would keep the discussions on the real issues facing our country and our planet instead of the scandals and propaganda we are about to get non-stop until Trump is impeached, which I believe to be inevitable.

It absolutely kills me when ppl crow "faf left! squawk far left!" As if he's proposing radical shit. All of the shit he puts forth has been done in other successful nations.

He's a mainstream FDR Democrat, not a Clinton 3rd Way Democrat...

Absolutely..

that Hillary was taking too much time in the convention. She knew that the convention was about Bernie, why was Hillary intruding?

There were millions like her

match up and Hillary showed tied or losing to him, there were millions like her!

So how were we supposed to nominate him instead?

None of these "shoulda nominated Bernie" threads ever answer that.

The DNC and the Hillary campaign did cheat, it is a fact. Out of all of the money Hillary raised for the DNC to supposedly help the down ballot races, her campaign got over 98% of that money. This hurt the down ballot races as well since they did not get the money.

Not all of the fault lies with the Clinton camp though. The media was against Bernie because they knew his plan was to break up their oligarchy (6 companies = 95% of all media). they joined the Clinton surrogates in belittling Bernie when they mentioned him at all (see Chris Mathews anytime Bernie's name was mentioned).

I am still not saying he would have beat Hillary straight up, but I think it more likely than not. Hillary is an Establishment politician in an anti-establishment election year. This is a big reason we will now have a President Trump. The Bernie vs. Hillary Primary is almost exactly like the Hillary vs. Trump race. Hillary had more air time and the media legitimizing her while delegitimizing Bernie. Trump had the media in his corner giving him more air time and mentioning Hillary's past scandals and of course, the emails. The common theme was that the media played the decisive role in giving us the orange idiot for Prez!

That includes victories by those who are strong proponents of the TPP, for instance, and losses by those backed strongly by Sanders.

And you really ought to read this: http://www.newsweek.com/myths-cost-democrats-presidential-election-521044

As many of us pointed out at the time, Clinton had essentially wrapped up the nomination by mid-March and arguably after Super Tuesday. Sanders never had the support of the base, without which you simply cannot become the nominee.

Without caucuses, which are undemocratic, the Dem. Primary wouldn't have been even remotely close.

with this rigged shit.

Bernie lost by 3.7 million votes. It wasn't all that close.

Had the DNC nominated Bernie anyway, it would have created a firestorm of controversy, and Trump would have won anyway, with the popular vote to boot.

The DNC had their thumb on the scale. If it had been the other way around you would probably acknowledge it then, but not before.

I agree to disagree and go fight the Trumpster together.

Follow the link in post #52.

It's humorous how many folks here dismiss him and bash him for not being a Dem... apparently certain of them would not have voted for him in the GE because he didn't meet their standards. Even though he espoused policies that conform to the core tenets of our political philolsophy.

Do to Others as You Would Do to Them
'n my faith — maybe it gets back to the bible — in that you would like other people to do to you as you do to them. That we are one world, one people, that I am impacted negatively if there are hungry children in America. I just don't think human life is about making billions and billions of dollars and ignoring the reality around me.'

https://www.facebook.com/senatorsanders/?hc_ref=NEWSFEED&fref=nf

Actually mattered.......

who was crushed when he lost all due to an enthusiastic yell the media obsessed about, it never dawned on me to shit on John Kerry after he won the Democratic primary. I gotta say this chronic whine from Sanders fans about Hillary not caring is getting seriously old.

She won, she adopted many of his policies, she bent over backwards to get his supporters on board.
I have never witnessed from our so-called base aka liberals/progressives pile on our candidate when the candidate on the other side was basically Hitler until 2016.

I fear the Democratic party will not recover from this. I'm 63 - rallies aren't my thing anymore - I did go see Obama with 100,000 others but I was 55 then.

Watching Sanders get his ass handed to him, watching Clinton win the popular vote over Trump, then acting like there was some kind of revolution that should be put up on a pedastal. You shouldn't dismiss such a strong majority. That's the morilization that is going on.

This is one of those, if my aunt was my uncle things. Bernie didn't get enough votes, therefore, he was not the nominee.

I never felt Sanders was on my side, and several other voters obviously didn't either. How come we aren't getting media attention about how our needs aren't being met?

rehash...

you are not helping by posting the same kinds of threads like this week after week. Not every one in the party supported Bernie Sanders. All you are doing is pissing off the 3 million plus Hillary supporters who voted for her. Stop it, JUST STOP IT

and nominated him instead of Hillary?

No.

There is no evidence that Bernie would have been stronger in the general election. The GOP had their mountain of opposition research on Bernie, the Russians would still have worked to help DT, and vote suppression still would have affected the votes of millions of Dems.

There is plenty of evidence that Bernie could have fared better in the general election. He would still likely lose Florida but win all of the rust belt states. Russia may not have gotten invloved. Putin had a personal vendetta against Hillary. Sanders like Trump is for weakening NATO but he is also non-interventionalist - Putin loves it.

More importantly in this particular election, Bernie rallied young people around him. They run social media and have enormous power. After Hillary won primary, they lost interest in this election. I personally do not know of a single young Bernie supporter who voted for Clinton. They left the ballot blank for president - thankfully it's in Cali so didn't matter. Bernie or bust was extemely powerful!

and watched Bernie get elected.

And Eichenwald reported the huge file of opposition research he'd seen on Bernie. And what the GOP lacked they would have just made up.

You don't know Bernie supporters who voted for Clinton -- so what? My anecdotal evidence is that ALL the Bernie supporters I know switched because they are not DUMB or so STUBBORN they'd shoot themselves in the foot.

And I talk to others on a daily basis on Pantsuit Nation, which is full of progressives who either started with Hillary or switched to her when she became the nominee.

W got almost 3 million more votes than R's, don't disparage that.

Her campaign adapted a lot, made changes to include Sanders platform. It wasn't enough 'change' to help the majority of Sanders voters vote for Clinton.

What did Sanders end up with in the primary? was it about 25%-30% of the votes? A lot of votes but Hillary clearly won primary. If she had picked Sanders as VP asap, that would have been a win.

Sanders won't run in 2020, he will be Senator for a while longer. He just bought a house by a Lake. I think he looks forward to about 2020 to be out of this current new government. He wants to organize in the private sector, along with others like the Obama's.

.we would now be discussing President-elect Clinton, instead of that asshole Trump.

BTW, Sanders ended up with 43% of the votes in the primaries, (Clinton got 55%)

Bernie won 23 states to Clinton's 34.

(Wikipedia -"Results of the Democratic Party presidential primaries 2016&quot

(I was unable to post a link, for some reason)

She went with a person she was very comfortable working with. To late to cry over split milk, I'm following Sanders, Obamas and their group after 1/20, to hell with Republicans and their Unfit-twit.

We are all Democrats here, and we have the right to express our feelings, regardless of which candidate we supported in the primaries.

Isn't that what this "2016 Postmortem Forum" is for?

And 22 states.

"You don't get that by scolding people for holding bigoted or unenlightened views. Progressive politics is not (or should not be, at least) about sanctimonious moralizing; if you want that, there's always the Religious Right."

in what context are you framing this?

Calling out dogwhistles as racist? Pointing out bigoted rhetoric is bigoted?

It sounds like another 'we need to reach out to those poor poor marginalized white people' post. People seem to forget that they are not the ones who suffer indignities daily at the hands of these people. I still get racist ass emails from self described 'progressives' who have been banned from here. I get them from Trump voters. They dont seem oppressed to me.

you have to think about the traditionally alienated and disengaged people who supported Sanders. They are the ones that matter, not folks who have simply been abused, discriminated against, denied their rights, shot for driving while black, or had their crotch grabbed by a self-indulgent pervert. Of course, I'm sure none of that crossed your mind, and you just voted for Hillary because she has a vagina and it was her "turn."

If we all refused to answer or get involved in the anti Hillary/Bernie threads maybe they would stop posting. It is not helping our party unite. STOP IT!

Geesh.

How long were you in a coma?

why those running for office who were endorsed by Bernie Sanders did not win. The sooner you all stop it with this mess the sooner we can focus on the mid-terms.

polish up the establishment approach since it's worked SO well so far?

... we failed with her, and we should have seen it coming. America wants outsiders as President. Obama was an outsider, Bill Clinton was an outsider, Ronald Reagan was an outsider. They defeated people who had been in Washington much longer they they had been, people with more experience and better resumes. Now we had the biggest insider vs. the biggest outsider of all, and guess who won? The outsider. Bernie wasn't an actual outsider, but since he was a socialist firebrand, he could run as one. Sure they had plenty of opposition research on him, but did anyone care about the mountain of oppo research on Trump? They knew he was a lying, racist, kleptocratic pig and voted for him anyway.

So let's not point out the horribly banal, like, we don't know what would have happened if... of course we don't! But we imagine and think about who we want next time. And I hope we don't run another insider. Let Trump be the insider next time, and let's run a very progressive populist who can fire up the people who stayed home or THOUGHT they wanted Trump.

I know several Bernie supporters who even went as far as to register democtratic so they could vote in the primaries for the first time in their life. Unfortunatey, Hillary supporters did not have same kind of enthusiasm.

I think the lesson for all of should be that enthusiasm matters. Obama had it (McCain did not), Trump had it, Hillary did not.

After this weekend, I came to realization that I made a mistake not voting for Bernie in the primaries. I supported everything he said but voted for Hillary because I felt she was more experienced and realistic and I just like her and never in my life even heard of Bernie before the primaries. I also forgot how much I did not like her in 2008 and supported Obama but she grew on me over the years.

Next time I will be paying special attention to enthusiasm and be more strategic in my vote.

I was not a huge fan, but I've grown to respect and like her and I still think she would have been a great president. But the requirements for a candidate are different. That's unfortunate actually, because the best candidate is not necessarily the best president, but that's how it is.

I can't type about the real problem without losing my account at DU.

If the Democrats were actual populists, there would be no Republicans.

Good luck with that.

Posturing won't go very far.

You said it would have been smarter to nominate the man whose lost by millions of votes. Do you not think we might have been pissed the fuck off at being disenfranchised by the process of stripping the nom from the person that about EIGHTY PERCENT of us voted for in the primaries to give it to the old dude who never even showed up in our neighborhoods?

So, in esscence, disenfranchise us to make white progressives happy so we win with a guy we never wanted. That would have made us lose even worse because no ways in hell would I bother voting if my vote was discounted during the primary to make white folks happy.

They say Hillary was uninspiring, yet she beat both Bernie and Trump in the popular vote. Hell she beat Obama in the popular vote back in 2008.

She had Russia and Comey practically conspiring against her, the MSM airing nothing but negative coverage about her, and the progressive puritans turning their backs on her (because watching the world burn beats a center-left president), and STILL she captured 66 million votes, more than any presidential candidate in history not named Barack Obama.

She has my upmost admiration, certainly more than Bernie.

There were plenty of people who voted against trump, not for hillary.

And were smart enough to know how to prevent it. Anyone who needed to be inspired was overprivileged and entirely lacking in empathy and only cared about themselves.

Eichenwald said it so well:

Also, there were probably plenty of people who voted against Hillary, not for Trump.

Bernie Sanders got more than 13 million votes in the primaries (43%)
to Clinton's nearly 17 million (55%)

Bernie Sanders won 23 states to Clinton's 34 states.

If Clinton had chosen Sanders as her running mate, she would have had a UNITED Democratic Party behind her, and probably would have defeated Twitler by at least 8 million votes,

.

Warren is the only person who could beat Trump at Twitter.

Sen. Warren would have made an excellent choice as HRC's running mate.

Months ago, when I suggested this, many DUers said: "No, we need EW in the Senate"

G.E.

Bernie slaughtered Trump in every poll and HRC was tied. With the media e-mail garbage Hillary didn't stand a chance. Our "news" ignored all Trump ctimes. We got screwed. Our fault for allowing blatant media bias for 25 years. Still brainwashing minds. Not Hillary fault.

"I want to get progressive policies that help/are beneficial for ordinary people (of all demographic backgrounds), so consequently, I want progressives to be elected. You don't get that by scolding people for holding bigoted or unenlightened views."

I agree with that statement. At this point, it should be all about winning friends and influencing enemies. I've had to learn the hard way over the years that diplomacy matters. If we can't even accomplish that on DU, how are we going to convince anybody else? I think there should be respect for other people's opinions, even if you don't agree with them.

Well......except maybe for Trump's.

Some assholes.

That would def be smarter.

Obviously.

Sid

after he lost the primary by millions of vote.



Of course, Clinton voters said they would vote for him in the primary. We were winning and didn't fell wronged. Voiding our votes over some polls would have changed that in a heartbeat.

perhaps even more important, they would have come out and voted for the Democrats in the down ticket who were running for Senate in those critical swing states. 47% of the voting populace refused to even come out to vote.

In Michigan Hillary lost by .3%. Jill Stein received 1.1% of the vote. Similar patterns in Wisconsin and other critical swing states.

In Wisconsin Russ Feingold lost by a much greater percentage than Hillary. If everyone who had voted third party, or those self-identified progressives who didn't bother to vote, had voted, not only would Russ be in the Senate, so would most of those swing state Democrats running for Senate

My mind is already made up, and I already know everything I ever want to know.

Sanders campaign brought absolutely nothing to the Democratic process--only division...

I wouldn't necessarily say that this would have been his effect in the general, but it's what I hoped for. He done good in at leadt that respect, and left our platform better than he found it.

In a bout of their extreme ego, they go with the meme that they are the victims who have been alienated and disengaged. Truly a selfish spectacle they take part in. It's deeply rooted in their mentality. Time to move on an ignore them. They are overall insignificant and ideology plays little role in their decisions.

Unfortunately, the left has its share of authoritarian types, too. Any thread about the 1st Amendment, you'll see how fucking depressing it is. Like the people who imagine it suddenly stops applying the minute someone draws a 'blasphemous' cartoon, or a woman shows up in a bikini on the cover of a sports magazine.

Maybe once we have a RW President who is constantly attacking the thing, people will once again remember what an important cornerstone of liberty it actually is. Sort of like ACLU threads; I've noticed folks are expressing much more unified support for the organization, where even just a couple months ago a few nabobs here were grousing about what irredeemable shitwits they are.

Protectionism will not save jobs.

enthusiastic for your candidate.