a clown car full of millionaires: the 2016 presidential primary thread

"I want to talk about our democracy. The billionaire class is controlling our political and economic lives because of the disastrous Citizens United case. The Supreme Court unconscionably gutted the Voting Rights Act. Make no mistake, we watching the erosion of our democracy and the gains that we have fought so hard to achieve.

Some of you may not see the connection between an out-of-control campaign financing system and the gutting of our voting rights, but you should not be fooled – they are two sides of the same coin. Our access to our democracy is being ripped away. The billionaires do not want people to vote."

This reminds me of when the Clintons were caught completely flatfooted in January-February 2008 by Obama's appeal, unable to understand the forces that drove his candidacy. The difference is it's the summer before a general election year and Sanders is trying to respond. I don't look for sincerity for a politician -- who cares whether he "means" it or not, whether his statement today is sincere? I want him or her persuaded.

the other minor difference is that clinton was ahead in the polls and not the fringe socialist candidate

Challenge is fine, Alfred, I'm glad to see Sanders take it seriously. I think he's handling it pretty well & I don't see this as some kind of disaster for the campaign.

Alfred otm. But other thing is: to whom does candidate own her/his succes? When Sanders spends the one year anniversary of Ferguson going to rallys in Seattle and Portland, he's showing a lot about which part of the progressive part of the democratic party he is trying to build on.

Plenty of outrageous shootings since Ferguson man, I think we can have plenty more one year anniversaries to honor in this lovely country of ours.

i mean ppl compare obama and sanders in terms of 'hillary can be beaten by a grass roots left candidate' but nevermind the huge gulf in terms of charisma, fame, political acumen, fundraising ability, and savvy between the two candidates there's the question of can sanders put together a coalition like obama or is his range much narrower? basically is he a progressive that can win iowa AND south carolina. so far sanders hasn't demonstrated that ability. even if hillary went to jail, o'malley dropped out, and webb's head exploded after overhearing a joke about scotland and sanders somehow got the nod he'd still need to assemble some semblage of that obama coalition. if hillary gets the nod unscathed and her shady wall st connects ready w/ open checkbooks she'll still need to assemble that obama coalition. the difference between hillary and sanders is hillary seems to understand this and already has ppl working those markets and getting endorsements from those community's leaders even though really she probably won't even need them that much for the nomination. sanders doesn't seem to understand this and so far doesn't seem to care. if he's merely in this race to apply pressure to hillary from the left on certain issues that's fine, he's doing a good enough job of that so far and even if a lot of that is due to media boredom well the media get bored w/ every race and taking advantage of that is part of the game. supposedly though what i hear from his supporters is that he not only should win but he can win and not just the nomination but the white house and then when you question how or criticise their game plan they whine about getting picked on.

Plenty of outrageous shootings since Ferguson man, I think we can have plenty more one year anniversaries to honor in this lovely country of ours.

― Vic Perry, 10. august 2015 01:00 (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Dude...

It's not a weird thing to go on about. I think it's weird doing that BEFORE saying Black Lives Matter and sayingtheirnames. And as I tried to put into that post as well, it's the other way around on his webpage.

So all you're looking for is some kind of ritual obeisance, like making the sign of the cross when you enter a church? And then he can go on about his business, having made the obligatory gesture?

(N.B., if it matters: I have no illusions that Sanders can win a single primary, never mind the nomination.)

If you go to the King Center in downtown Atlanta a great deal of wall space is given to the fight against poverty and economic inequality. It wasn't a side topic, it was integral to the civil rights struggle.

I think Sanders is wise to use that framing anyways because that's how he tends to see the world in general. It's not as if Bernie Sanders can personally speak for the BLM experience so it's all he can do to approach it from his personal reference points. otm on him probably being the most sympathetic candidate why not pessure HRC or Jeb instead?

I hear balls on the significant perils of an argument that subsumes racism as a superstructural side effect of class struggle and basically not necessary to talk about on its own terms. But I'm sensitive to that line and I don't necessarily hear it in that Sanders issues page. I did get a strong whiff of it from that big interview a few weeks back where all he talked about was jobs. Obviously, not all attempts to find ways of attacking structural racism that deal in economics fall into this classic American liberal pitfall. (My own sense is that efforts at voter suppression are driven by white racism and by the "billionaire class" since guess who else gains if Democratic turnout is suppressed? This is not an either/or.)

But this Sanders document, much as it wants to find links between race and Sanders's core issues, is fairly convincing and frankly fairly strident, much more than I would expect from some guy from Vermont, or anybody who's run for the Democratic nom in my voting lifetime. I mean, it's not the document of someone who expects to build a traditional coalition (or win)! There's a whole lot of criticism for example of police violence without a lot of conventional cushioning ("of course, most police officers are great" etc). Sad that that's my standard -- certainly I'm not trying to say this is as good as we can expect from the "progressive alternative" -- but it does jump out. I mean, Hillary doesn't have a page called "Racial Justice" as the third link on her "Issues" page, though she does have a paragraph about "a balanced criminal justice system," filed under "Strengthening America’s Families," that begins by mentioning "the recent tragedies in Ferguson, Baltimore, and North Charleston."

All of which is not to go after Hillary's credentials on these issues, but rather that I don't really see the "who even now is basically going 'look i added a page on the website and hired a black girl, what else do you want?'" or the "shrugging it off." Where are you getting that from? I mean the position paper just went up today, has he even had time to say "look I added a page on the website"? Or have I missed a more recent statement by Sanders?

Made it into the Bernie event at the Moda Center.

http://imgur.com/ewiXtTa

http://imgur.com/ewiXtTa

Lower bowl filled, upper bowl about 2/3rds. So much mass-transit was coming in it killed one of the trains right by the arena and delayed everybody 30-60mins. I biked over, and Thank God the a/c is cranked.

btw clay i was not being sarcastic re security, Clinton, Sanders and BLM.

You know what? No president is going to be doing the heavy lifting on BLM issues, even if he/she "wants to." Not to say some won't be more useful than others, but the leading will come elsewhere.

From on the ground here in early primary/caucus season:

I feel like Frederik is concerned with the stances that candidates take or issues they address in this early season rather than their ability to build a base. The point is to appeal to specific people who are already invested enough to show up in a primary race, not to solidify the platform.

I think Alfred summed that up in a way by saying that it's about whether one candidate is more viable than another. That's about it at this point.

Maybe not everything, but relevant. Like, of course his West Coast tour at this moment is the three big liberal cities. Enthusiasm raised there turns into money you can spend on the next trip picking up smaller cities, advertising in them, etc., etc.

I glossed over it but really the single-issue (which, that is a hell of a reduction when the issue is so large) lobbies at this point are about bringing things into the dialogue and defining the future direction of the debates and speeches. It's difficult for issues to make the jump from the primary debates to the general debate but it's the real end run of action right now.

Moda Center was at full cap, at least 1k turned away.

Symone D Sanders, his new press sanctuary, MC'd the event and gave the opening speech. She sure as _shit_ has it down, and it gunna be someone to watch. The lady has it.

http://www.wweek.com/portland/blog-33573-the_13_home_run_lines_from_bernie_sanders_portland_speech.html

Something like 22-29K showed up to a venue that could hold 20. Not really surprising, given that 75K saw Obama here in May 2008 and 50K for Kerry in Summer 04

'A handful of protesters chanted "Black lives matter" throughout Sanders' speech, but they were too few in number and too far from the podium to be widely heard.' Oh, phew, guess everything is ok now then.

who u voting for fred

The former communists.

his new press sanctuary

This is a funny autocorrect.

Chanting has always solved every fucking problem.

Hey hey! Ho ho! Fruitless chanting has got to go!

I hate "hey hey ho ho" so much.

Oliver Willis as an interesting article (though not the most calming headline/URL)

http://oliverwillis.com/2015/07/23/if-black-lives-matter-blacklivesmatter-has-to-grow-up/

predicated partly on the idea that pressure groups on the left need to work more like pressure groups on the right, Grover Norquist being the main example.

I remember feeling old on seeing, four or so years ago, someone from the Tea Party claiming that of course the Democrats were substituting solidarity for self-examination and of course the Republicans were tearing themselves apart for ideological purity - that's just what both sides do! It looks like the wind has turned to an extent?

Oh, don't worry, the Republicans are still capable of tearing themselves apart in fits of stupidity:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4H4p__aAPOs/VceQcnTWKnI/AAAAAAAAawk/xhL82hUMOFo/s640/Screenshot%2B2015-08-09%2Bat%2B10.38.44%2BAM.png

If Eric Erickson is now a RINO, nobody is safe.

that is a crowded leaflet

WWW.BENGHAZI-TRUTH.BLOGSPOT.COM

WWW.TEAPARTY.FIREANTS.NET

at least they are winning the comedy URL game

can we put oliver willis and frederik B on the same planet so they can argue together forever and no one needs to listen?

benghazi-truth.blogspot.com is a treat

The media is freaking out in blind terror at Donald Trump, who is every liberal's worst nightmare, because he takes on the liberals and GOP establishment like a bunker buster, and like Reagan before him, there seems to be no way to stop his skyrocketing popularity.

Trump represents - indeed is - what the liberal elite though they had locked out of the White House for all time: another Ronald Reagan. Only this Reagan is on media steroids and is wearing NYC-made brass knuckles under his boxing gloves. No self-conscious warrior, he. While Reagan would settle for a technical knock-out, Trump is exhibiting the same behavior that made him essentially the biggest player in the toughest city on earth: leaving his opponents unconscious and in critical condition on the mat. And that is what republican voters want. They are sick and tired of being derided by the media, mocked by Obama, and utterly betrayed by tearful GOP House Speaker Boehner whose eyes glisten with love at Obama.

... is this an excerpt from a Chuck Tingle book

'Bammed in the 'Rack by Boehner's Boner

Ha ha, yeah, this should go over well. (The comments are already a joy.)

can we put oliver willis and frederik B on the same planet so they can argue together forever and no one needs to listen?

― usic ally (k3vin k.), Monday, August 10, 2015 8:33 AM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I thought frederik was already in northern europe or something

Weird thing about Sanders and people like Nolan: They correctly point out, that inequality and racism is intrinsically linked - as Nolan says, the racial wealth gap is that median white family has 16 times the wealth of median black family, completely shocking - but they only use that link one way. As Sanders said, it is 'useless to try to address race without also taking on the larger issue of inequality.' But why isn't it also the other way around, why isn't it useless to address inequality without also taking on race?

Sanders' economic policies seem so much solely against the 'billionaires' and Wall Street. It isn't even true class struggle, for it's really everyone against the financiers. The idea seems to be, that if you break the power of the 1%, of the oligarchy, then the resulting money and power would benefit everyone else, and equally. It's almost trickle down economics in places. But of course, white supremacy is very real, and if you just pour more money into a white supremacist system, it will strengthen white supremacy. Redistribution of wealth, without considering race, will always just further the racial wealth gap. Even the link Nolan puts in about the racial wealth gap begins with blaming the 1934 National Housing Act and discriminatory lending, and also points out that white people see a much larger return on college education than black and hispanic people. Helping with homeownership and education are two great ideas of redistribution, and especially education is central to Sanders' political plan, but without doing anything about racial discrimination, in the past this has only led to more racial inequality, so why should it not lead to more racial inequality in the future?

If I was a cynical, I would say that there is a big reason Sanders and Nolan don't say that focusing on inequality without racism is useless. Because it's not useless at all, it's very very useful. As long as you're white... And as long as Sanders bases his campaign on the white progressive vote to such an extent that he would spend the weekend 1 year after Ferguson in Seattle and Portland, how many times does anyone think the importance of including race in every discussion of inequality would be included in the discussion?

from paglia's thing:

Trump is a Trojan Horse sent by the crafty Clinton machine.

lmao at endorsing the best RW conspiracy theory of the last week

holy shit does she accuse christie of having work done? this is great

p funny to watch the conservative mediaverse fall into a knife fight over the weekend. breitbart and i think mark levin (and i have to bet coulter) have gone pro-trump, or at least, anti-fox

front page ed of breitbart is a real piece of work fyi

https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=from%3Ak_mcq%20%23cuckservative&src=typd

what a nice human person

https://twitter.com/k_mcq/status/630683009822363648
https://twitter.com/k_mcq/status/630159584846483456
https://twitter.com/k_mcq/status/630653056221376512

https://twitter.com/search?q=SJW%20from%3Ak_mcq&src=typd&lang=en

this kind of shit is a step or two past the line of most of these guys, or the martyr andrew himself really, way more of a takimag kind of vibe.

If I ever hear someone say "cuckservative" in person I can't be held responsible for my reaction.

Dog person. Cats are just OK... :)

When did conservatives become so interested in cuckoldry?

my wife went to high school with the editor in chief of brietbart.. he should be about 30 years old. =\

been a far right internet/twitter phenomenon for a long time now, goes hand in hand w/ their obsession with "alpha" masculinity

xp

It isn't even true class struggle, for it's really everyone against the financiers.

When you are trying to build a coalition with enough voters to win a national election, then including "everyone" in your voter base seems to me like a smart move. If your idea of class struggle requires a revolution of the proletariat, then obviously you don't accomplish that by running for President of the USA anyway.

there's an argument to be made that this is why trump is doing so well as he is simultaneously a financier, a candidate and an "Everyman" insofar as everyone has seen him act the fool on national television