There was this professor of mine who chased me around the department calling Obama

[La Lioness Priyanka]

a war criminal. And people who vote for him as supporting a war criminal. I don't really know what his reasons were, i was just too busy moving away fast and rolling my eyes.

He supports Bernie now, and thinks Trump is the better alternative to Clinton. (for real, i'm not making up this shit). Because at least if Trump is the nominee, liberals will protest wars, whereas if Clinton is the nominee, liberals will ignore the wars she engages in.

I wonder though, if part of the reason traditionally disenfranchised groups (Blacks, Hispanics, Gays, and women in the workforce), support Hillary partly because of this phenomenon, where people who stay above the fray (like Bernie and this professor of mine) can have really pure ideological views, whereas people who have fought for some of us have ended up getting their hands dirty. But we don't hold this so strongly against them because at least they were doing something and making slow change, instead of remaining above the fray and affecting nothing at all.

I'll speak from my vantage of being queer, Bill Clinton did pass DADT and DOMA, but to me these were all incremental improvements over the alternatives. There is no way he could have passed gay marriage or non-discrimination in the army, but DADT was better than a straight up ban and DOMA was better than a constitutional amendment. After DOMA, marriage moved to the states, till enough states had gay marriage that the SC had to rule one way or the other on it.

i'm not saying this explains the whole story, but i wonder if it contributes in part to the differences we see between support for Clinton and Sanders in our communities.

[noiretextatique]

1. Centrism is an ideology...so is incrementalism

And a lot of people just are buying those ideologies, including some black, gay and female people.

[upaloopa]

3. No it is not. You cannot list the tenets of centrism

Democratic socialism and conservatism are ideologies.

Those that support them believe in lower taxes small government and higher taxes and bigger government.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

5. incrementalism is not an ideology as much as a strategy

and i would not say some black, gay and female people. i would say most are. she's winning those demographics by large margins, especially women who have experienced discrimination in the workforce.

[BlueMTexpat]

2. I believe that it does

indeed contribute to the differences we see among most Clinton supporters and the most radical Sanders supporters, many of whom seem to be represented on DU and other mostly anonymous internet forums. I also believe that the worst among the most radical are not even Sanders supporters at all, but merely anti-Hillary spoilers. They will drop Sanders like a hot potato in the GE and gravitate to their GOP tendencies.

But I believe that, in real life, more Clinton supporters and Sanders supporters see eye-to-eye about the Big Picture than don't. At least, this is what I have experienced and see in my own family and friends. We recognize that the True Enemy is the GOP and ANY one of its candidates. We will come together to support the Democratic candidate in the GE.

I also sincerely believe that candidate will be Hillary. But if by some incredibly unforeseen circumstance (please not!) she is not the Dem candidate, I will support whoever is. The alternative is simply too awful to contemplate.

[Jackie Wilson Said]

4. I am finding support for Trump or GOP in general from more and more Bernie voters

who say if Hillary is the nominee they wont vote for her.

Hopefully these folks, including the hundreds of the ones here on this board, are not liberals at all and their votes we were not counting on in the first place.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

6. he's the only bernie voter i know who can tolerate trump, but in general he is an iconoclast

so i wouldnt generalize to other bernie voters.

many are solid dems who would vote for the dem nominee

[Jackie Wilson Said]

7. Good news. But I think I am finding that many Bernie supporters on this board

and out there are not liberals who vote Democratic.

Many of them either dont vote usually, are new to this either due to age or just not caring, or are independents who lean to the right.

I simply have to hope that more of them are actual liberals who by definition would be incapable of sitting out the election.

[Number23]

8. Your comments about DOMA and DADT represent the exact kind of incrementalism that the fanatics

despise. The pragmatism behind your perspective is 100% at odds with the "give me what I want now" ideals of zealots.

And I think that what you're seeing is not necessarily disenfranchised groups (blacks, hispanics, gays, women etc.) supporting Clinton in huge numbers over Sanders. I think that more than anything, we are seeing the TRUE DEMOCRATIC BASE supporting Clinton over Sanders. It was being disenfranchised in the first place that drew all of us to the Democratic Party.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

9. that's a very interesting perspective

(about the true base of the party)

[La Lioness Priyanka]

10. I support activists demanding change now

I just don't need the president to be cutting edge on policy issues. I would want my mayor to support far more left leaning positions than I expect of the presidential candidates.

Im not against activists at all. I admire blm and I was part of the marriage equality movement, but I am ok with presidential candidates promising slow and incremental changes.

[Number23]

12. I don't think anyone is against activists! They have an amazingly important part to play in

everything. Even some of the more radical ones.

I am ok with presidential candidates promising slow and incremental changes.

I'm even okay with presidents promising radical, sweeping changes... as long as they can intelligently and reasonably explain how they are going to go about getting them done.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

13. Agreed. I didn't want to come off as sounding

As though I was against radical activism.

[Number23]

14. No, I know you aren't. I don't think any thinking people concerned with the rights of others could

be.

[rusty quoin]

11. Things surely get crazy at times during the primaries. n/t

[BainsBane]

15. I think it's pretty clear

Last edited Mon Apr 18, 2016, 01:35 PM - Edit history (1)

That race and gender are central to this election. We've lived in a capitalist nation with great inequality since its foundation. Yet it's only when we have an African American president that may be succeeded by a woman that the "establishment" has become unacceptable. That some of those voters openly express a preference for Trump over Clinton is because their goal is the perpetuation of white male privilege. There is a reason the support for the various candidates and parties breaks down along racial and, to a lesser extent, gender lines.

Both Sanders and Trump talk about going back to when America was "great," supposedly more equitable, according to Sanders. Only there was greater poverty for everyone except the white upper-middle and middle-class back then, and the majority of the population was kept legally subservient to that minority. Yesterday on one of the Sunday shows, Sanders actually said the US was better off 100 years ago. While it's true the wealthy have more than they did a century ago, there was absolutely no safety net and poverty was significantly worse. Not even white men were less poor in 1916 than they are today. That particular statement reflected a poor understanding of history, but his typical response that America was better off economically in the early 1960s is alienating to many Americans, myself included.

Democrats and Dem-leaning independents may have any number of reasons for preferring Sanders, and most will support the nominee regardless. But the people who move from supporting Sanders to Trump will do so because they want to punish the majority of the population that refused to defer to their sense of entitlement. We see them make threats about it now. If Bernie isn't elected, we'll stay home, they say. They make such threats knowing full well what the outcome would be to the civil rights of the majority of Americans. Some of them want to see society reordered the way they believe it should be, with them at the top and the rest of us at the bottom. For them, the fact they can't control everything, that the votes of others matter too, is unacceptable. But really, they are just shit out of luck. They can vote Republican, but they can't stop the demographic changes in the nation.

It's been clear to me for some time that the antipathy some feel toward the Democratic Party is toward Democratic voters, precisely the groups and issues you reference above. They time and time again denounce social justice as insignificant or "peanuts" compared to their rage. When they do so, they make clear they see Americans whose survival is linked to those policies as insignificant.

So if guys like your college professor want Trump as President, it's because he wants the kind of society Trump promotes.

The notion that Democrats or liberals wouldn't demonstrate against war under a Democratic President is obviously bullshit. We have historical precedent to the contrary from Vietnam. Your professor is lying, quite possibly even to himself. I bet you anything he's the kind of guy who complains about "Affirmative Action" and how disadvantaged he is for having to suffer through life as an upper-middle class white male. Anyone who enables a right-wing presidency that, through the courts and legislation, strips away voting rights, civil rights, women's rights and LGBT rights, as well funding for Social Security and the safety net, is not leftist or liberal. They are self-entitled and angry at their fellow citizens.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

16. This is the most beautiful post I have read in a very long time

Thank you for taking the time to write it so well.

[bettyellen]

17. "they see Americans whose survival is linked to those policies as insignificant" That rings so true!

[La Lioness Priyanka]

18. please make this an OP so more people read it. It's so well written and would be tragic

if betty and I are the only ones who got to read it

[BainsBane]

19. Problem is

Chances are good it would be hidden.

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

21. This is absolutely BRILLIANT!! Should be its own tagged OP!

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

20. One of the biggest issues I have with Sanders's extreme supporters and even many in the mainstream

Last edited Tue Apr 19, 2016, 07:34 PM - Edit history (2)

Democratic Party is the white Democrats' unwillingness to exercise political nuance when it comes to President Obama. Bill Clinton's near-Republican agenda was always explained away and excused, to a large extent. Even now when it comes to Hillary Clinton, many people go through great lengths to reason and contextualize the Clinton stance on issues; they even contextualize the fact that Bill Clinton proudly ran on getting DOMA passed in 1996. (Note here the provocative Nation piece from Melissa Harris Perry, who I will defend with every bone in my body because I do believe that she was 100% correct in her assessment and unfairly attacked for it: http://www.thenation.com/article/black-president-double-standard-why-white-liberals-are-abandoning-obama/.)

But no such nuance is afforded to President Obama. This greatly frustrates me, not only about Bernie Sanders who got a firsthand glimpse at how Republicans (and many Democrats) deliberately thwarted the president's agenda and practiced racism at every turn; it frustrates me about many white liberals and even some mainstream Democrats who turned their backs on the president, especially in 2010 when he needed us the most.

I keep hearing arguments that should Sanders win the nomination and ultimately the presidency and is subsequently forced to compromise and make deals with both Republicans and Democrats, his supporters and many Democratic voters will turn on him. However, looking at history, I don't think they will. I truly believe that psychological racism is at play. I do believe that The Black Tax is playing itself out. People issue double standards and lack nuance, reason, and intelligence when it comes to this president. All other white Democratic politicians are given the benefit of the doubt.

That's one of the reasons why I started this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/118749055

I still believe that the thread makes a strong point, particularly in light of the fact that Sanders was never a Democrat and has reduced voters in the South as "The Confederacy," during a time when the Rethugs have been assaulting the voting rights of black Americans and many others who vote Democratic.

[forjusticethunders]

22. From my perspective, I feel that capitalism is central to the maintanance of racism.

White people and black people are at odds because capitalist society consciously perpetuates racism in order to keep opposition against capitalist exploitation divided. Many populist and progressive movements have been derailed when the owners start trying to pay out the psychological wage of racism to avoid paying the physical wage of the production extracted from the worker. But racism has become "it's own thing" and is now self-sustaining, and creates inequality and oppression that go beyond the economic.

My hope with Bernie Sanders is that he was a candidate who could lead a movement that could transcend and defeat this divide and conquer strategy by pulling white workers back into recognizing and voting for their economic interests, and realizing that their liberation is bound up in the liberation of every oppressed group. But while he talked the talk, he hasn't walked the walk, and most black/POC voters saw through it. To black voters, an ideologically imperfect candidate who has been in the fight is preferable to an ideological perfect candidate who's been on the sidelines for decades.