Comments

2
Clinton's going to need to do at least a little pandering to Bernie supporters

A lot of it is emotional. I'd suggest going the gentlemanly route and being a super gracious winner - singing her opponent's praises, acknowledging his role in reclaiming space for liberalism, and acknowledging his influence on her.

My worry is that her worse political instincts will tell her this is a sign of weakness, when in fact it's a sign of strength.
3
It doesn't really matter what she says now. She's a total charlatan and a compulsive liar who'll say anything to get elected then govern straight from Wall Street. The Grand Canyon-sized chasm between her actual record and her platform proves it. It's incredible how shamelessly gullible people are.

The polls are all over the place, but at least 20% to 40% of Sanders supporters will be voting third party, and that number will only go higher with more of the inevitable Reagan-saved-the-queers-from-AIDS gaffes, an indictment, or the leak of those greed-crazed Goldman Sachs speeches.
4
"Bernie can still have a strong progressive influence on the party." Yeah, well maybe as he dials back his own campaign, he'll finally have the time to start aggressively campaigning and fundraising for down ballot candidates that his revolution would need to succeed, something for which he's shown little enthusiasm to date.

In any event, another does of reality will hit the Sanders campaign next Tuesday, when he falls further behind after voting in Indiana.
5
There is no fucking way Trump gobbles up more than a handful of troglodyte Reddit posters from the Sanders camp. All Clinton has to do is not actively shit all over them, and they'll turn out just fine.
6
Worst. Election. Ever.
7
@5, and she won't which is why Hillary isn't a shoe-in to win come November.
9
I'm getting a bit tired of this weird speculative nail-biting bullshit around what Sanders supporters do or don't do. There is no reason to preemptively blame them for something that has not yet come to pass.

Whether or not one wants to believe it, Sanders has the support of a substantial minority of Democratic voters that Clinton absolutely will need to win. She can't forfeit one end of the party for another and hope to win. So yes, she should court their votes, not by demanding them but by simply not condescending to them about their "ideals" or political inexperience and by offering a genuinely progressive vision (something beyond vague incremental "progress"). You know, actually earn their trust ahead of the election. Sure she won't get all of them, but she'll get enough.
10
@8: And, it's already time to be mortified.
11
She better go all out. Imagine LOSING to Trump! No one who's not a TrogloCruz can live with that!
12
Did Boehner really compare Cruz to Lucifer? Dude needs to redo his catechism. Cruz is no "bringer of dawn"! Even calling him Beelzebub would be too complementary for that creepy creep.
13
Doesn't take much to see from the click-bait headline it's another condescending elitist Matt Baume rag piece. Talking shit about Sanders and his people for months and now you think you're entitled to their votes? Eat a dick, son.
14
One of the things I've observed about Senator Sanders and his most devout followers is their highly exaggerated sense of self-importance and power. The clinical definition is grandiosity, which is on full display at the gaudy and pointless rallies he so adores, where even the birds are drawn to the great man, and who can argue with that kind of divine power? I've certainly given up trying.

Unfortunately, he was creamed, and therefore has very little power or right to make any demands of Clinton or the party, despite all of the indignant huffing and puffing coming from some of his supporters. So go ahead and hold your breath until you pass out, Clinton will smear Trump in the general election, with or without your support. And next time, put some effort into organizing a real coalition of support and power, rather than spending your time worshipping the messiah at his meaningless and expensive rallies, listening to the same tired old speech he's been delivering for the past forty or fifty years. That's how it's done. Ask the Clintons.
15
No citizens matter in California, Oregon and other states who haven't yet voted. Why? News media (like this) destroyed democracy with bias & lies. My response: https://www.change.org/p/dnc-i-will-vote… #BernieOr Bastille
16
If she's so presumptive, why not take the side of hope and keep fighting for a win? No matter how unlikely, there's no harm now, right? She's going to win anyway, ...right?
17
All told, ~13% of eligible voters voted in Democratic primaries, so rather than worry about Sanders supporters not voting for Clinton, YOU should be a lot more concerned about how many of the other 87% will show up for the general election given that both Trump and Clinton favorability ratings are in the shitter.
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@9- I'm not sure if she or her proxies are capable of not being dicks to the Sander's enthusiasts. And it's not just the Democratic Party's left wing, it's the whole range of independents. That's where the real swing voters are, and that's where she loses really badly to Bernie and has trouble with Trump. There's a good chunk of the voting public that wants something different (without a lot of thought about what that would be), and Clinton the Second sneering down at them is not going to win votes.
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@7: *shoo-in, you asshat
@12: I think Belial is a good term for Cruz.
22
@9 (JMS):

[Hillary] should court [Bernie supporters'] votes ... by offering a genuinely progressive vision (something beyond vague incremental "progress"). You know, actually earn their trust ahead of the election. . . .
The problem with this is that Hillary's personal and political history consists overwhelmingly of courting and servicing the top 0.1%. She has never fought a wealthy private interest, proposing to actually cost it serious coin, in order to benefit the peasantry. Nothing about her suggests she ever will. (She rejected even considering trying to take on health insurance companies in 1992, when the for-profit health sector had dramatically less advertising-budget leverage over commercial news media than it does now. CBS actually aired a Walter Cronkite special, Borderline Medicine, that essentially concluded that Canada's single-payer healthcare system was better than ours. Fast-forward to 2009 and even PBS, via Frontline, exercised so much editorial "Big-Health damage control" in TR Reid's Sick Around America that Reid disassociated himself from it entirely. A single-payer reform effort had much better chance of succeeding in 1992 than it does now, had it been championed by an effective leader, simply because American news media had not yet become Big Health's bitch.)

We have examples in history of patricians who fought to better the lives of the serfs. FDR was supposedly the wealthiest president we have ever had (adjusted for inflation), and he championed the New Deal and the Second Bill of Rights. Manuel Zelaya was from one of Honduras's wealthiest families, and he moved to begin protecting indigenous lands from foreign mining conglomerates. (Zelaya was removed in a 2009 coup that Secretary of State Hillary put in overtime to validate and cement. Honduras's hundreds of murdered indigenous activists and thousands of fleeing children are on her head.) Hillary is not an FDR or a Zelaya. She is indisputably a hard-core DLC neoliberal on the economic front and a hawkish PNAC neoconservative on the military front.

Some Bernie supporters, the low-information ones, will doubtless be taken in by Hillary's more progressive-sounding lip-flapping on the campaign trail, especially as it will be passed along -- unparsed and unchallenged -- and amplified and embellished by Hillary's claque in the conglomerate media (and even in some "alternative" newspapers). I'm sure some people also buy cars based on TV ads and showroom puffery, without checking Consumer Reports. But Bernie supporters who know Hillary and the Clintons for what they are will look past the recently applied lipstick and see the pig. Hillary can never "earn our trust."

Which leaves us the question of whom to vote for in the general. At a certain point, short-term lesser-evilism becomes long-term more-effective-evilism, and we have reached that point. The Democratic Party has been shamelessly fucking the bottom 90% ever since Bill Clinton "triangulated" in 1994, at the very latest. (It started as early as under Jimmy Carter, by some accounts; with the formation of the Democratic Leadership Council in 1985, by others.) Ronald Reagan may have announced the neoliberal agenda, but it took Bill Clinton and the DLC-spawned "New" Democrats to really kick it into high gear. (Bill reaped the feel-good high of the Third Way bubble and left office before it burst. Some Clintonistas still want us to ignore that it was Bill's deregulation of banks and derivatives that set the stage for the 2007 financial collapse and the ensuing Great Recession.) Bernie, a Democrat of tactical necessity, was one of very few remaining reasons to ever vote for a Democrat again. If he's out, the notion of reforming the Party from within is very arguably out, too. The Democratic Party itself needs to die and be replaced by a party that represents lower- and middle-income Americans, not just corporations, billionaires, multi-millionaires, and six-figure professionals -- a new party with a national committee that doesn't actively recruit and support the worst, most conflicted, most sold-out candidates the plutocracy proposes to sponsor. If Bernie loses the Democratic Party nomination, I hope he joins the Green Party (which already has ballot access in enough states to win a presidential election, numerically speaking) and that he takes a large number of progressive Democrats, assorted lefties, and even some horrified traditionally Republican voters with him. It may spoil this election, but at this point, replacing the Democratic Party with a much more representative one may well be the only viable way to reverse our descent into plutocratic oligarchy.

Anyway, if Bernie gets the Democratic nomination, he'll get my vote. If he loses the nomination and joins the Greens, he'll get my vote. If he loses the nomination and endorses Hillary, Jill Stein of the Greens will get my vote. There's still one Democrat who will get my vote, and that's Pramila Jayapal in the 7th. But Hillary? She will never get my vote. I got conned into voting for a fake progressive once before, in 2008, but I won't get fooled again. Do Hillary and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz really believe that I believe I have nowhere else to go? I do, and that's where I'm going.

TL;DR? What Original Andrew said @ 3.
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PCM: Yes, please, go somewhere else. People who are serious about making progress simply don't have the time or patience to hear how fucked up things are ad nauseum. We know. Now get out of our way so we can do something about it.
24
Fuck this pro-Hitlary shit piece! Write his fucking name in if you can assure it will be counted on the Eighth of November! Bernie never said he objects to the idea . . . . Lisa Murkowski can give you some pointers . . . .http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-el…
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It is already a four-way race: the Greens and "Libertarians"/Selfish PricKKKSS have are registered in enough states to theoretically win Our White House. --- http://www.gp.org
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@23 (mfg5000):

PCM: Yes, please, go somewhere else. People who are serious about conning voters into believing they want to make progress for the 99% simply don't want them to understand how fucked up things really are or how fundamentally treacherous the Democratic Party has become. Now get out of our way so we can maintain or improve upon the status quo for the top 1%.
There; fixed that for you.

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