Let me get this straight...Good polls for HRC count but good polls for progressive ideas DON'T?

[Ken Burch]

This weekend has had one arrogant, triumphalist HRC thread after another. They cite polls to vindicate them. But when it comes to the polls showing the party AND THE COUNTRY support progressive views on Iraq and healthcare, these same HRC groupies dismiss them.

Please explain the contradiction, HRC'ers.

(This is a thread questioning the candidate's supporters, not "hating" the candidate, btw)

[Emit]

1. Good point, Mr. Burch.

I had the poll thing thrown at me recently and I'd like to hear more about this contradiction.

[Ken Burch]

3. Yeah, hearing an explanation would be good...not holding my breath though.

HRC's supporters think they are ABOVE actual debate. They are probably far more arrogant than their own candidate in this regard.

[JeffR]

2. Ken

merely by posing such an impertinent, jealous, bankrupt, illegitimate, misogynist, hateful questioning such as this, you have forever revealed the depths of your bashing, trashing, supercalifrigilasting utter HATE HATE HATE for the junior Senator from New York.

I am outraged, sir, and I would seek redress!!!!!!

uh, sarcasm, BTW...

[Ken Burch]

4. ...I was getting it that you were being sarcastic...

And you've won my eternal respect for using "superfragilasting" as a verb.

(Nice Joni Mitchell "BLUE" avatar, btw.)

[JeffR]

6. Thanx! Can't be too careful these days

the place is a minefield.

[Trajan]

5. If we count the number of posters who are 'HRC Triumphalists'

We can see they form a VERY small slice of DU ..... Loud they may be : small they are ....

I accept both polls as strong probabilities ......

[robcon]

7. False OP

I notice not one link in any of your smears.

The triumphalist meme is a strawman, much more often than not, promoted by anti-Hillary posters. There are a few Hillary supporters who think that her double-digit lead in the primaries mean the nomination is a lock, but they are vastly outnumbered on DU (as I've linked to on another thread) by anti-Hillary posts falsely claiming triumphalism by Hillaryites.

The campaign has a long way to go. Repeating the strawman that Clinton supporters have had "one arrogant, triumphalist HRC thread after another" is a false claim. Almost all of those threads are started, LIKE THIS ONE, by anti-Hillary posters who use the false story to decry the strawman claim that Hillary's supporters are gloating over the "sure thing."

[TahitiNut]

19. Oh! Those terrible, terrible peas!! (Go to the mattresses!)

[Ken Burch]

24. What's that about "false Opie"?

Andy and Barney will be having a word with him 'bout that!

[Perry Logan]

8. Keep it up, anti-Hillary folks. Every attack creates another Hillary supporter.

[Ken Burch]

9. It's not an attack on the candidate. It's a request for explanations about inconsistent logic

If you cite the polls to say Hillary's in the lead, you also are obligated to accept that the party and the country WANT Democrats to be more progressive than Republicans on all issues.

No one wants a Democratic nominee who ISN'T explicitly committed to an early Iraq pullout. The country knows that this war only serves conservative and anti-people ideas and can never lead to anything positive for anybody who isn't Dick Cheney.

No one wants a Democratic nominee who thinks getting big campaign checks is more important than galvanizing the party and the country for real change.

There is no case for centrism or "nuance". Both guarantee a repeat of 2000 and 2004. They can lead to nothing else.

It's time to stop using the 1992 DLC playbook, now and forever.

I'll assume you've got no arguement against the above.

[robcon]

10. In other words, you've admitted you made it up

Your words, Ken Burch, were: "This weekend has had one arrogant, triumphalist HRC thread after another." That was mistaken (maybe a lie) IMO. Do you agree that it is (mostly) anti-Clintonites who create these strawmen on DU about how Hillary's supporters think her prospects are a lock?
----------------

As far as the "progressiveness" of the candidates (as opposed to the issues themselves) I think you have a contradiction in terms.

On individual issues the Democratic Party is to the left of what the candidates proclaim. This is not surprising in 2007, since there has been a huge difference between the electorate on issues vs. candidates for a century or more.

The president we want to vote for is the person whom we trust. Most voters could care less about individual issues, knowing that the important issues every president will face are the unknown, unknowable and totally unexpected events during their time in office:

Carter: Iranian hostages
Reagan: collapse of USSR
Bush I: invasion of Kuwait by Iraq
Clinton: rise of Islamic fanaticism
Bush II: 9/11/2001.

To oversimplify to make a point:
Carter beat Ford because Ford was goofy and unpresidential - not because of ideology or issues.

Reagan was able to obtain 'Reagan Democrats' (middle and working class voters who normally vote Democratic) because people liked him so much - not because his political policies were superior to Mondale's.

Clinton stood out in the primary with his 'Sistah Souljah moment' - otherwise his campaign was boilerplate and not differentiating from other candidates.

Dean lost the primaries in 2004 when his 'scream' showed him to be unpresidential, not because his anti-war positions were unpopular.



We vote for those whom we trust, the one whom we expect to react 'correctly' in those extreme times when leadership is needed. Ideology and issues are much, much, much less important than trust and 'looking presidential' as far as gaining votes and winning elections.

The best example this year is Kucinich... on the raw issues he should be much, much more popular that the polling suggests. Kucinich, to put it mildly, is as unpresidential a person I've ever seen (even less than Ross Perot and Carol Mosely Brown.) His Dept of Peace proposal, to say the least, shows him not be be ready for prime time. It's not his policy, but his pollyanna/non-presidential/almost cartoonish behavior and attitude that dooms him, IMO.

So I don't find it unusual - in fact it is TOTALLY EXPECTED, that 'adding up' issues doesn't add up to the winning candidate in the primaries or in the general election.

[Ken Burch]

11. I didn't make ANYTHING up. don't EVER fucking call me a liar.

And what a candidate stands for is part of the reason a candidate wins. Democrats who act like their own party's core values are contemptable and their own base is the enemy will never win again. That's what "centrist" Democrats do...attack their own party in the service of the OTHER party.

The "centrist" sabotauge of the LEGITIMATE Democratic Senate nominee in Connecticut and the "centrist" sabotauge of the freely and fairly chosen presidential nominee of 1972 are proof of this.

Admit that you centrists are just an equal force with us progressives, and that you are not OWED control of the party and the platform. Then, we can talk.

(And I can't believe you'd brag about the "Sistah Souljah" moment, in which a presidential candidate dissed every important African American figure in the party over a hiphop lyric that was a legitimate expression of the fear young African Americans rightfully feel towards urban police departments. That was a disgrace, and it led to eight years in which a "Democratic" president did nothing for the poor and the Rainbow but gloat about leaving them out in the cold.)

[Name removed]

13. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Ken Burch]

14. You invoked it as an example of a succesful strategy

You implied it was the only thing that made Bill Clinton stand out as a candidate...as if his support(false as it turned out)for healthcare was irrelevant, as was his apparent(though also later proven false)identification with the poor and the working class had nothing to do with it, as if massive voter registration by the Rainbow Coalition and Jesse Jackson had nothing to do with the Democratic victory that fall.

You were bragging about the ugliest, most racist and most POINTLESS thing Bill Clinton did in the whole campaign. He didn't have to diss the Rainbow to win, and you know it. Nobody who praised that diss was going to vote Democratic anyway.

And I don't lie. You are very close to violating DU rules by repeating that slur.

[robcon]

16. Clinton's Sister Souljah moment was the most important he had.

It was that, and the promise to "end welfare as we know it," that won him the election, IMO. I didn't brag, or even care about the correctness of the statement - I was commenting on the strategy, or popularity, or trust that Clinton gained by those statements. The proof is that Clinton had no trouble getting black votes and the cooperation of African-American leaders (as you know, since you mentioned that support) for '92 and '96.

You seem to want to speak for others when you wrote"a presidential candidate dissed every important African American figure in the party over a hiphop lyric that was a legitimate expression of the fear young African Americans rightfully feel towards urban police departments." I prefer to let the voting and polls speak for those people - Clinton was EXTREMELY popular among African-Americans.

The fact that you wrote the lie: "That was a disgrace, and it led to eight years in which a "Democratic" president did nothing for the poor and the Rainbow but gloat about leaving them out in the cold.)" is a measure of your hysterical and hyper-emotional anti-Clinton attitude. Not a believable word in the post, Ken Burch.

[Ken Burch]

20. If you want to disagree with me, that's one thing.

But it isn't your place to call my viewpoint a lie.

And you know perfectly well I wasn't claiming to speak for African-Americans. Yes, they were loyal to him. It was a pointless loyalty, since he was never on their side in terms of policy, but it was there. I suppose it reflected the depths of despair and defeatism in that community.

Clinton's healthcare proposal was much more important than any pandering to conservatives on race. People wanted healthcare, that was what brought them into his column. Clinton would have won every vote he took in the fall of '92 even if he hadn't poorbashed at all. The country was moving past that already.

[Breeze54]

15. Carter beat Ford because Ford pardoned Nixon!

Period!

And there were many cheerleading posts for HRC this weekend!

Ken Birch is NOT a liar!!!

:grr:

But you're an asshole for accusing him of that and it's against the rules!!!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/forums/rules.html
"Do not call another member of this message board a liar, and do not call another member's post a lie.
You are, of course, permitted to point out when a post is untrue or factually incorrect."

You need to apologize!!

[Name removed]

17. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Ken Burch]

21. I've never lied

And my name is spelled with a "u", for the record.

[Ken Burch]

23. Thanks for the support, Breeze!.

Perhaps sometime I'll have your "six" as well!

[blondeatlast]

12. That nerve is a bit too exposed. Perhaps medical care would be helpful. nt

[Mark E. Smith]

18. Assumption: The two are exclusive.

Anybody getting as tired of "bar fight" threads as I am?

And we don't even get a drink.

[Ken Burch]

22. Well, they don't have to be exclusive, I'll agree

HRC could embrace the Kucinich platform or at least important parts of it. Or at least, she could allow a free vote on all platform planks at the convention. That would make this process far less contentious and would do her no harm.

[LostinVA]

25. I should at least get a pint of Guinness out of it

[Ken Burch]

26. Not a pint. A round for all of us.

n/t.