What's so terrible about saying "the system is rigged"?

[Ken Burch]

1) If we're talking about the economic system, it's the truth. The form of capitalism we have now IS rigged to grind down the many while elevating a tiny few. For most of us, this model is NOT our friend. We don't even have to be anti-capitalist to acknowledge the fact that some kind of massive rebalancing needs to be done.

2) It's not as though, if no one in our primary had said it, none of the voters would have felt it. There was a HUGE feeling out there in the electorate that those below the median(I'm phrasing it that way to avoid saying "those on the bottom"-since, for some reason, that is taken to be an insult rather than simply an observation of the conditions a lot of the country lives under).

3) We could have won, under ANY nominee, by championing the idea of resetting the scales, of giving everyone a fair shot and challenging the arrogance of those who have somehow ended up on the top(and I say "ended up", because in most cases their current social station has nothing whatsoever to do with their own "effort&quot .

4) We could have made the statement a pro-Obama statement. We could phrase it as "our president tried his best to unrig the game, but the establishment threw nothing but roadblocks in his way and gave him nothing but disrespect for his efforts".


I get it that Trump used rigged game rhetoric in a cynical way. But He would have done that anyway, with the exact same level of effectiveness, even if we had run on an "everything's coming up roses" message. Trump is an epic demagogue(with epic friends in other countries tipping the scales and rigging the game in HIS behalf). He was going to say something like that no matter what anyone in our primaries said.

The only way WE could counterract the message Trump was always going to use was to get ahead of it and take it away from him, by saying "yes, things ARE rigged...but WE'RE the ones who will actually unrig them".

That was how Barack Obama took the presidency with majority support in 2008.

Our party's strategic masterminds refused to do that.

[vi5]

1. One thing I've been amazed by...

People saying that voter suppression and new ID laws played a part in states like Ohio, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Florida, but then want to ignore what people/group/entity would have been responsible for....you know....making sure we had enough people on the ground doing their part to get people their proper id's, get them to the polls, etc (Hint: Their name starts with the letters D, N, and C). Maybe take some of the dozens of people calling me and knocking on my door in solidly blue New Jersey and get them out to those other places. I mean it's not like we didn't have more than enough warning that these laws were in place and that the scumbag republicans were going to try something.

[Docreed2003]

4. Excellent points!

And a reasonable critique of the DNC's handling of this election.

[OilemFirchen]

6. Oh bullshit.

The Clinton (and DNC) ground game was massive. Here in Montgomery County, Ohio, there was an extraordinary GOTV effort by the candidate and the party. Trump had NO presence. Yet Trump won - the first time a Republican had prevailed here in 28 years.

Find another scapegoat.

[vi5]

8. So it wasn't voter suppression or ID laws?

Or is the campaign and DNC not in charge of making sure people get to the polls?

If it was extraordinary, how come we lost?

[OilemFirchen]

13. There were a ton of factors.

Obviously, keeping people from voting is one of those factors - quite significantly. Blaming the DNC for failing to get people to the polls, however, is ridiculous.

Why did we lose? I'm pretty sure there's an entire forum devoted to that very subject...

[Hoyt]

27. In most states, just about anything will suffice for an ID, even a utility bill.

There are some states where a voter's ID requires a photo. That does present an issue for some folks, but in many of those states you can vote absentee without an ID. I don't like GOPer gerrymandering and voter harassment, but I don't think many people were turned away from the polls.

We need to stop even encouraging people to get out in November, and encourage them to vote early and not wait until the last day where weather, illness, work, etc., might interfere with voting.

And, quite frankly, we need to quit making excuses. We were beaten by a bunch of ignorant white wingers. Clinton should have beaten Trump in darn near every statem, save for the white wingers.

[vi5]

50. I don't disagree....

..good points, all. But whatever the solution, it is the campaign and the party's responsibility to organize well enough and have enough mechanisms and support in place to make sure people either 1) vote early, 2) have the right ID's to vote 3) vote absentee 4) have no polling place intimidation and 5) just damn vote. Especially in the swing states where it will be close.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

26. Hello, neighbor!

I saw a strong GOTV effort from Clinton's team too, like when I voted early.

It made me confident that she'd at least win Montgomery County! Nope. This area usually leans slightly liberal too.

[csziggy]

56. The work I saw with the Clinton campaign was about registering to vote NOT GOTV

And there was no effort I saw to help voters check to see if their names had been purged or if the voters had the needed IDs so that they could vote.

Maybe it was because Florida had stopped purging voters after a lawsuit, but still, people need their photo ID to vote and have needed them since 2004 - and the Democratic Party has done NOTHING to change that law or to educate voters about getting their IDS.

I did miss the last week of the campaign since I was not in the state but from what I heard before I left and after Election Day not much was done here to get people to the polls. In this county, heavily Democratic with an excellent supervisor of elections that does his own GOTV efforts, maybe the Clinton campaign didn't think it was needed. (Leon County had over 75% turnout and went almost 60% for Clinton. http://enr.electionsfl.org/LEO/Summary/1601/)

[Gothmog]

2. Trump used this bogus claim to great effect

Sanders had no chance of being the nominee after Super Tuesday but continued his campaign which hurt Clinton. Here is a good example Sanders really hurt Clinton I am still mad at the number of times that trump used Sanders' claims against Clinton. Sanders' baseless charges that the system was fixed and rigged were used by trump to great effect and hurt Clinton http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/rigged-system-donald-trump_us_5855cb44e4b08debb7898607?section=us_politics

And if Sanders’ rhetoric during the primaries started that stew simmering with his talk about the system only working for the rich, Trump brought it to a full boil with his remarks blaming undocumented immigrants and trade agreements that he claimed were forged as the result of open corruption.

I think he was able to thread a certain toxic needle. But he did win, and we’re all going to pay the price.
John Weaver, aide to Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s presidential campaign

The underlying irony for those who sought to end what they perceived as corruption is that they may well have elected a president whose record through the years and whose actions since the election signal it could be the most openly corrupt administration in generations.....

And if Sanders’ rhetoric during the primaries started that stew simmering with his talk about the system only working for the rich, Trump brought it to a full boil with his remarks blaming undocumented immigrants and trade agreements that he claimed were forged as the result of open corruption.

Sanders' bogus rigged process claim hurt a great deal

[forjusticethunders]

5. The problem is that it wasn't "bogus" - the system IS rigged.

It's a half-truth, which are often more dangerous than actual lies. Because of the sectarian tendency to paint all groups not as far to the Left as traitors and sellouts, a tendency Bernie shares (and that was the subtext of what he said, the Dems were enthralled to Big Capital because the party wasn't yet a Marxist party), Bernie felt no inclination to point out WHO WAS DOING THE RIGGING.

In reality, while one could argue with more than a degree of plausibility that the Democratic Party is too cozy with the wealthy, there is simply no comparison between the two parties in regards to which is the "working class" party. The game is rigged, but it's the Republicans who are doing the rigging, along with their conservative media allies (Jeff Zucker anyone?) and billionaire financiers. Bernie should have put more detail into it.

[Gothmog]

7. There are two problems-first Sanders had no chance of being the nominee and the DNC did not fix race

Sanders failed to appeal to key groups in the Democratic base including Jewish, African American and Latino voters and so he had no chance of being the nominee. Most of Sanders so-called victories were in caucus states where the process is very undemocratic. Sanders was in effect eliminated after Super Tuesday but kept on campaign by misleading his supporters as to his chances of being the nominee. Clinton's lead after Super Tuesday was too great for Sanders to over come.

Second, the DNC did not fix the nomination process That claim was false http://www.newsweek.com/myths-cost-democrats-presidential-election-521044

Easily the most ridiculous argument this year was that the DNC was some sort of monolith that orchestrated the nomination of Hillary Clinton against the will of “the people.” This was immensely popular with the Bernie-or-Busters, those who declared themselves unwilling to vote for Clinton under any circumstances because the Democratic primary had been rigged (and how many of these people laughed when Trump started moaning about election rigging?). The notion that the fix was in was stupid, as were the people who believed it.

Start with this: The DNC, just like the Republican National Committee, is an impotent organization with very little power. It is composed of the chair and vice chair of the Democratic parties of each state, along with over 200 members elected by Democrats. What it does is fundraise, organize the Democratic National Convention and put together the party platform. It handles some organizational activity but tries to hold down its expenditures during the primaries; it has no authority to coordinate spending with any candidate until the party’s nominee is selected. This was why then-President Richard Nixon reacted with incredulity when he heard that some of his people had ordered a break-in at the DNC offices at the Watergate; he couldn’t figure out what information anyone would want out of such a toothless organization.....

According to a Western European intelligence source, Russian hackers, using a series of go-betweens, transmitted the DNC emails to WikiLeaks with the intent of having them released on the verge of the Democratic Convention in hopes of sowing chaos. And that’s what happened—just a couple of days before Democrats gathered in Philadelphia, the emails came out, and suddenly the media was loaded with stories about trauma in the party. Crews of Russian propagandists—working through an array of Twitter accounts and websites, started spreading the story that the DNC had stolen the election from Sanders. (An analysis provided to Newsweek by independent internet and computer specialists using a series of algorithms show that this kind of propaganda, using the same words, went from Russian disinformation sources to comment sections on more than 200 sites catering to liberals, conservatives, white supremacists, nutritionists and an amazing assortment of other interest groups.) The fact that the dates of the most controversial emails—May 3, May 4, May 5, May 9, May 16, May 17, May 18, May 21—were after it was impossible for Sanders to win was almost never mentioned, and was certainly ignored by the propagandists trying to sell the “primaries were rigged” narrative. (Yes, one of them said something inappropriate about his religious beliefs. So a guy inside the DNC was a jerk; that didn’t change the outcome.) Two other emails—one from April 24 and May 1—were statements of fact. In the first, responding to Sanders saying he would push for a contested convention (even though he would not have the delegates to do so), a DNC official wrote, “So much for a traditional presumptive nominee.” Yeah, no kidding. The second stated that Sanders didn’t know what the DNC’s job actually was—which he didn’t, apparently because he had not ever been a Democrat before his run.

Bottom line: The “scandalous” DNC emails were hacked by people working with the Kremlin, then misrepresented online by Russian propagandists to gullible fools who never checked the dates of the documents. And the media, which in the flurry of breathless stories about the emails would occasionally mention that they were all dated after any rational person knew the nomination was Clinton’s, fed into the misinformation.

In the real world, here is what happened: Clinton got 16.9 million votes in the primaries, compared with 13.2 million for Sanders. The rules were never changed to stop him, even though Sanders supporters started calling for them to be changed as his losses piled up.

I was a delegate to the national convention and I saw much of this silliness first hand. This election was winnable but the sanders campaign did a great deal of damage that is the subject of valid commentary

[forjusticethunders]

34. You misunderstand - Sanders's entire point was that both parties were doing the "rigging".

In reality, only one party is "rigging the system" and that's the point Sanders should have made, instead of saying that the Democrats were conspiring against him.

[Joe941]

9. The system was rigged against Bernie.

[Gothmog]

14. How? Sanders lost due to the fact that Jewish, African American and Latino voters rejected him

Sanders only appealed to a very narrow segment of the Democratic base and most of his so-called victories were in caucus states which are inherently undemocratic. African American, Latino and Jewish voters rejected Sanders which is why he lost.

[Joe941]

52. Super delegates cost him the primaries - totally changed how the primary progressed!

[Gothmog]

54. Super delegates had nothing to do with Sanders lost

Super delegates have never voted against the candidate with the most votes. Sanders did not come close to getting enough votes.
http://pleasecutthecrap.com/a-message-for-hardcore-bernie-stans/

Hillary Cinton won the nomination because of democracy. She received more than 57% of Democratic votes cast. Bernie Sanders virtually only won caucuses, which are the least democratic aspect of the primary process. And most of those he won only because she decided to save her money for the General election. He won very few primaries, except for his “home states” and Michigan and his clock was cleaned in virtually every other state that mattered. Demographically, he only won white liberals. The fact that YOU think he made it close, or only lost because of “Super Delegates” is a hallmark of your delusion. Bernie Stans largely didn’t seem to notice that she reached out to you repeatedly and you bit her hand off, making you more like Republicans than you should be comfortable with.

In the real world the DNC had nothing to do with sanders being a failed candidate

[Joe941]

57. You assume starting out with a 700 delegate lead has no bearing on the rest of the race. It changes

the whole dynamics of the race. It would be like a basketball team starting out with a 20 point deficit - you shoot more 3 pointers and take more risks. The whole game changes.

[Gothmog]

58. Sanders got less than 43% of the popular vote in the primaries

Super delegates had nothing to do with this. Sanders failed to attract the support of Jewish, African American and Latino voters which is why he lost. Sanders sole area of support was white voters and you can not win the Democratic nomination with only white voters.

43% of the vote is not a good showing in my book

[Ken Burch]

15. Trump was always going to say exactly what he said.

And it was always going to have exactly the same effect.

Bernie didn't invent massive popular discontent. It has existed for years.

BTW, there were virtually no Sanders primary voters who supported Trump in the fall.

Were we supposed to pretend that the system ISN'T unjust, that is ISN'T rigged?

I accept that Hillary won the nomination...but it was possible to do that without denying reality.

How could we have crafted a winning progressive message out of pretending everything is just fine?

Democrats don't win as defenders of the status quo.

[Docreed2003]

3. This is how I see it...

At the outset, let me say: Prepare for the flame war because it's coming. That being said, I agree with your post in many ways. Trump never once uttered the "rigged" phrase until Bernie did. Your points highlight what I think Bernie's positions were in that the current economic construct in this country is weighed towards the haves and against the vast majority who are struggling for a better life than their parents had. Trump only jumped on this message, although it was a perverted version of it, when he saw how successful Bernie was with connecting to people on this issue.

Trump was effective because he played up the economic divide and portrayed himself as an "outsider". Some folks latched into that message because they are in areas hardest hit by the current economic frustrations of the country and others did so because they felt that his message was similar to what Bernie was proposing and fighting against. Make no mistake, though some here seem hard pressed to admit this fact, there are a huge amount of people in this country who have been left out of the economic recovery since '08, and I'm not referring to the bogus NYT whites vs POC piece that has been commented on here many times recently. What I mean is that there are people of all backgrounds who have continued to struggle in this current economic climate, while the overlords of business continue to make profits. If you are able to step back and realize that most people in this country aren't as politically in tuned as we are here, it's easy to understand how the casual nightly news watcher could get caught up in Trumps rhetoric and not even know, or in some cases ignore, how racist/sexist/bigoted he truly is.

While it is certainly truth that Comey and the FBI and Russian interference played a huge role in this election, and I believe that it played enough of a roll to tip the balance to Trump. That doesn't mean that there aren't a huge percentage of voters across the country who feel that they are no longer best represented by the DNC...that's due to bigotry and hatred, yes, on a very large minority though. I think the bigger issue is the DNC has lost workers and unions because they no longer fight for their concerns. In recent decades, the DNC has been content to cull votes from unions, while taking donations from groups that would happily kill organized labor in this country.

The people in this country, and I mean the non-1% millionaire/billionaire class, are at a breaking point. They are looking for anyone to represent them against the economic powers that be. While Clinton had a strong economic platform, there was no attempt by the Clinton campaign or the DNC at large to express and make that platform digestible for the masses. Saying, "Check out my website for details"...just isn't good enough.


So, Trump won. He won by FBI interference, Russian espionage, and blatantly ripping off Clinton's most successful opponent of the primary and bastardizing his message. What are we going to do about it? I think it starts locally. We must make every attempt to connect with voters, even if we know they will never vote for us, because we must have our message and plan expressed to people in a real way. While we absolutely must fight and investigate the severity of foreign interference in this election, at the same time we have to understand why it could happen in the first place. Racism and bigotry played a huge part, for a very limited yet vicious part of the Trump base, but that's only a part. I think the DNC must hone its economic message, even if it means spurning Wall St donors, and present a message face to face to our constituents that says, "I know you're hurting...I know your jobs may never come back. I understand that the moneyed interests in this country are against you, but here's what we're going to do to fight for you and try to ease your pain."

[ucrdem]

10. Strange how the "system is rigged" choir has fallen silent.

That's the problem.

[dionysus]

11. Are you going to claim that our economic system isn't tilted towards the wealthy, "rigged", if you

will... just because Trump uttered those words while faking a populist message?

[ucrdem]

12. It's a revelation to you that the wealthy have more money than the rest of us?

Because that's what that dopey line amounts to, and it wasn't just Trump who tweeted up a chorus of riggelo. A couple of prominent "progressives" were also fond of breaking into song for the cameras.

Well, where are they when we need them? In a TV studio far far away, blaming Hillary for NAFTA instead of making themselves useful for once.

[Ken Burch]

17. It's not as simple as "the wealthy have more money than the rest of us". Never has been.

It's that more and more wealth is getting concentrated into fewer and fewer hands. And that our party has concluded that, to get the support of those fewer and fewer people who have more and more wealth, its message has to be reduced to being progressive only on ONE set of issues...issues that are worthy, but which are nonthreatening and nontransformation, that are "safe" and will not lead to anything close to the ideas that

A) Those with more wealth should actually pay at least somewhat higher taxes,

B) there needs to be a continuing and expanded governmental role in addressing healthcare and at least alleviating poverty(we know now that charitable and voluntary efforts can't ever make a serious dent in that problem, because they are designed NOT to do so, but simply to give good "pr" to "the brand" and let celebrities pose with the poor kids they rented for the afternoon while affecting Christlike expressions);

C) If outsourcing, trade deals and automation put people out of good-paying work in this country, there is an obligation to create other good-paying work for those people and to make it as quick and easy and affordable as possible for those people to get training to do other jobs;

D) There's a moral and ethical obligation to make sure that no areas of the country turn into "job deserts", with people from those areas being forced to travel the country looking for ANY sort of work, not living anywhere long enough to have a home, a voice, or a vote;

[dionysus]

18. Wow, you seem a trifle upset. I suppose if trump said the sky was blue, after

hearing someone else say this, you'd have a coronary if people agreed. That's what this amounts to.

And if you don't think there's a lot of built-in shady, albeit legal ways, that the corporations and ultra rich people accumulate money and dodge a fair tax burden, then i can't help you.

Then again, you seem to be tripping all overself to crap on liberals, so maybe i shouldn't be surprised. If goldman sachs is good enough for hillary, i suppose we should now be fans, eh?



PS: points for riggelo, i like it when ppl can turn a phrase.

[sheshe2]

31. Dayum I lve you.

[ucrdem]

33. Heya sheshe!!!

I've been meaning to tell you something very important:

p.s.

[sheshe2]

36. Thank you...

Not into it much this year yet we are getting together on Christmas eve. All of us.... The nurses work Christmas day. So the eve it will be and I get to see all the wee ones that I adore. My grands, 10yrs-8 months. I am going to hold them tight.

Love you and a good Christmas to you and yours.

Thank you for that song.

[ucrdem]

42. backatcha sheshe

[Ken Burch]

16. It hasn't. Sanders supporters have been just as outspoken about the bogusness of Trump's "victory"

as Clinton supporters. NONE of us wanted Trump to win.

And there was simply wasn't widespread public contentment about the status quo before Bernie got in. If there had been, Bernie could never have taken 43% of the primary vote.

He wasn't supported by people who secretly wanted Trump.

He wasn't supported by people who couldn't handle the idea of a woman being president(the overwhelming majority of Sanders supporters started out as supporters of having Elizabeth Warren run for the nomination...that, by itself, proves that the Sanders movement was not antifeminist and antiwoman). They'd have supported an African American candidate who spoke about economic justice as well as social justice(those in the campaign who were a few years older had already proved that by their support of Barack Obama in the 2008 primaries). And they'd have campaigned just as hard against Joe Biden if he had run(since Biden would have run on the exact same agenda Hillary eventually ran on). If a latter-day Bella Abzug had run(and such a person would have stood on essentially the same platform as Bernie)Bernie's supporters...AND BERNIE...would have supported her.

The Sanders campaign was about the issues. Nothing else. Why are some people here so bound and determined to refuse to accept that? What is so threatening about accepting that?

[dionysus]

19. These giys have to blame someone, something, for this loss (other than

the candidate running), so bernie and liberals are a good a target as any, i guess... wait... why the fuck are people blaming bernie and liberals, anyway?

[dionysus]

23. That's a lot of straw. By that turn, i could say liberals aren't president of the college

Republicans at their school, while their future primary opponent marched with civil rigjts advocates...

[Ken Burch]

28. She lost any right to claim she cared more than Bernie about civil rights

When she sanctimoniously said, in the late 1960s, that she couldn't "condone" civil disobedience.

If you didn't support civil disobedience, you were refusing to support the most effective tactic the freedom movement had.

Without the sit-ins and the marches and the bus boycott, there would never have been the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts.

In opposing the only things that ever made a difference, HRC was basically telling African-Americans to shut up and know their place and eventually they might get half-freedom, increment by increment(by now, if they were lucky and "reasonable", they might be able to use public restrooms on Thursdays between 2 and 2:45 pm, June through September).

BTW, Bernie had no "angry reaction" to the two women who claimed to be civil rights protesters in Seattle. He insisted that they be allowed to speak(the organizers of the event-a rally in support of Social Security, not a Sanders rally-offered to take the mic away from the women and hand it over to him, but he insisted on supporting their right to speak their peace) and he listened for twenty minutes while they attacked him and his supporters and everyone at the rally. At that point, he realized they would never let him speak, so he left. He didn't even disagree with anything they said. What was he supposed to do...drop out of the race and commit sippuku?

[Ken Burch]

37. He was upset because they disrupted the event for no good reason

and because they were berating everyone there when the crowd had done nothing to deserve it, but he insisted on letting them speak when the rally organizers offered to take the mic away from them. And he listened to them spew totally unjustified hate at him for twenty solid minutes. How long was he obligated to stay there and take that? He'd done nothing to deserve their rage and had given them no reason to vilify him.

By telling the organizers to let them speak, Bernie defended their right to speak and listened to them for far longer than any other candidate would. If he had stayed longer, they'd have ranted longer. They had no agenda other than berating the guy for the sake of berating the guy.

[Ken Burch]

40. At the time, Hillary hadn't said anything explicitly in support of BLM

Last edited Thu Dec 22, 2016, 05:26 AM - Edit history (1)

Bernie might have given his slightly earlier, but by the same token BLM never gave him a chance. They didn't ask to meet with him or his campaign(Bernie would gladly have agreed), they didn't actually say what they wanted from him, they acted like he didn't care about racist killings by police(something a long-time civil rights organizer and Jesse Jackson supporter would automatically be outraged by) and they treated him like he was worse on race than any other candidate.

He at least listened to what the women had to say, even though they had no reason to single him out for attack. He then appointed a proud African American woman as his campaign spokesman, repeatedly adjusted his message to include AA concerns, and repeatedly met with BLM when they finally tried dialog with him.

He never deserved the hate and Hillary never showed any deeper concern about civil rights than Bernie had. She had also spent much of the Eighties building the Democratic Leadership Council, a group whose main objective was to get the Democratic Party to leave people of color out in the cold, and was just fine in the Nineties with the party's decision to accept the Republican narrative that crime, drub abuse, out-of-wedlock births and welfare fraud were mainly "black things&quot in reality, all of those were and are mainly white things).

That's what makes the "Hillary cares and Bernie doesn't" thing so maddening...it was and IS a total lie.

Bernie has his flaws, but as a person of the left, indifference to racism was never going to be one of those things.

(And the attitude those women had was that Bernie was evil, so how much was he obligated to take from them? He let them keep the mic. How much more could be asked?

Hillary could have won without smearing Bernie on that.

[dionysus]

48. What happened to our friend? Was the strain of this post more than they could bear?

[dionysus]

46. You mean he didn't usher them backstage, and wag his finger at them?

[Ken Burch]

30. Bernie was equal to Hillary in his civil rights commitment.

And it's time to stop smearing him on that. There was never any difference between the Sanders and Clinton campaigns in terms of the anti-oppression agenda.

[Ken Burch]

41. Actually, he made speaking out about racism a standard part of his stump speech

as the campaign went on.

And if you're the most left-wing candidate in the race, you're also going to be most antiracist.

That's just part of being on the left.

In any case, he's never going to run for the presidency again, so what's the point of still attacking him?

[Ken Burch]

45. There's no way you can seriously argue he wasn't to the left of HRC.

n/t.

[Gothmog]

55. Another strawman-there are very valid reasons why Sanders did not do well with AA and other votes

Your strawman arguments are amusing. The Sanders campaign did not appeal to many demographic groups (including the Jewish vote) for a host of reasons. One good reason is that Sanders repeatedly attacked President Obama which alienated a large number of key demographic groups. There is a vast difference in how Sanders supporters and Sanders view President Obama and how other Democrats view President Obama. I admit that I am impressed with the amount accomplished by President Obama in face of the stiff GOP opposition to every one of his proposals and I personally believe that President Obama has been a great President. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/clinton-sanders-obama_us_56aa378de4b05e4e3703753a?utm_hp_ref=politics

But lurking behind this argument about the future is a dispute that's really about the past. It’s a debate over what Obama accomplished in office -- in particular, how significant those accomplishments really are. And it's been simmering on the left for most of the last seven years.

On one side of this divide are activists and intellectuals who are ambivalent, disappointed or flat-out frustrated with what Obama has gotten done. They acknowledge what they consider modest achievements -- like helping some of the uninsured and preventing the Great Recession from becoming another Great Depression. But they are convinced that the president could have accomplished much more if only he’d fought harder for his agenda and been less quick to compromise.

They dwell on the opportunities missed, like the lack of a public option in health care reform or the failure to break up the big banks. They want those things now -- and more. In Sanders, they are hearing a candidate who thinks the same way.

On the other side are partisans and thinkers who consider Obama's achievements substantial, even historic. They acknowledge that his victories were partial and his legislation flawed. This group recognizes that there are still millions of people struggling to find good jobs or pay their medical bills, and that the planet is still on a path to catastrophically high temperatures. But they see in the last seven years major advances in the liberal crusade to bolster economic security for the poor and middle class. They think the progress on climate change is real, and likely to beget more in the future.

It seems that many of the Sanders supporters hold a different view of President Obama which is also a leading reason why Sanders is not exciting African American voters. Again, it may be difficult for Sanders to appeal to African American voters when one of the premises of his campaign is that Sanders does not think that President Obama is a progressive or a good POTUS.

Again, I am not ashamed to admit that I like President Obama and think that he has accomplished a great deal which is why I do not mind Hillary Clinton promising to continue President Obama's legacy. There are valid reasons why many non-African American democrats (me included) and many African American Democratic voters did not support Sanders.

I understand why Sanders supporters dislike talking about demographics but the fact remain that Sanders supporters tend to not like President Obama and that dislike affected the amount of support that Sanders got from certain demographic groups. The other so called reasons advanced for a lack of Sanders support in the above post are strawmen that can be explained by the concept of projection.

[sheshe2]

32. Bravo/ Brava!

[Grey Lemercier]

47. You are honestly saying with a straight face that MANY BernieBros

are not positively fucking GIDDY that Hillary lost? You should get out more. I even have run into some of the fuckers here in London.

[Ken Burch]

60. Actually yes.

Nobody on any part of the left is happy that Trump is in.

[Grey Lemercier]

61. You and I exist on different planets

[kcr]

51. Many of them have been, yes.

But you seem to want to ignore the ones who only want to focus on attacking Hillary and the Dems instead. They seem to feel that the strategy is to totally ignore the crap that the GOP pulled and blame everything on the Dems and create a circular firing squad instead of fighting Trump, when fighting the Trump GOP is what we really need right now. It's also completely ridiculous to blame this loss solely on the Dems.

[pnwmom]

25. Nothing. The Electoral College system is rigged to make the votes

of people in rural mostly-white states count for more.

[Ken Burch]

29. Thank you. It's the last vestige of the slave system.

Last edited Thu Dec 22, 2016, 12:39 AM - Edit history (1)

Not only does it give rural white a disproportionate say in presidential elections, it encourages such people to see everyone who ISN'T rural, white, heterosexual and "Christian" as "the other", "the enemy" as a menace to be fought at all cost.


It preserves the Confederate mindset in a world where that mindset makes no sense at all.

BTW...Sanders supporters are just as opposed to the electoral college as Clinton supporters.

[think]

44. Elizabeth Warren says 'the system is rigged' (2012)

Published on Sep 5, 2012
Elizabeth Warren, the candidate for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts addresses the crowd at the DNC in Charlotte.

[JI7]

49. Because it's mostly a backlash against things like a Black President and Women and others gaining

power .

[think]

53. It has nothing to do with banks rigging markets, becoming felons, and no one going to jail?

Some are the same banks that got bailed out in the great crisis while a great many Americans lost their homes.

And it wasn't just one time that these banks have been caught violating the laws. Many are multiple repeat offenders.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/08/business/in-sec-fraud-cases-banks-make-and-break-promises.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-banks-rigging-lawsuit-idUSKCN0WU1E8

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

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-08/deutsche-bank-records-alleged-to-show-banks-rigged-silver-prices

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-21/jpmorgan-barclays-fined-in-separate-swiss-rate-rigging-probes

https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/five-major-banks-agree-to-plead-guilty-to-felony-charges

[emulatorloo]

59. Apparently you never listened to an entire Clinton speech

"3) We could have won, under ANY nominee, by championing the idea of resetting the scales, of giving everyone a fair shot and challenging the arrogance of those who have somehow ended up on the top(and I say "ended up", because in most cases their current social station has nothing whatsoever to do with their own "effort&quot . "

Clinton talked about giving everyone a fair shot and income inequality. She had plans and policies to back it up.

Consequently she won with voters whose main concern was the economy. She won voters making under 50k and 30k

Trump won higher income voters whose main issues were immigration and/or terrorism.

It troubles me that you continue to buy into all the false narratives in the MSM and those predatory bloggers attempting to cash in on BoBs

Yes we need to shake up the Democratic Party and make sure our message is clear. We need to be fact based though.

[Orsino]

62. The system's having been rigged is why we're all here. It's not open to debate.

Everyone, of course, will have a favorite bogeyman, and some of those are made up.

Rigging the system, though, is in the job description of many of the richest and most powerful people in the world.