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Post by robeiae on May 13, 2017 18:05:23 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on May 13, 2017 18:10:29 GMT -5
I hate everyone. Is there a party for me?
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Post by robeiae on May 13, 2017 18:17:39 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on May 13, 2017 18:29:50 GMT -5
So how do I get them on the ballot?
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Post by michaelw on May 13, 2017 20:05:30 GMT -5
They should run Hillary again in 2020.
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Post by Optimus on May 13, 2017 20:08:46 GMT -5
I'll admit that, while I heard about a lawsuit being filed, I'd forgotten about it. And, if you hadn't posted this, I likely wouldn't have been reminded of it because Salon is a garbage website that my sanity prevents me from visiting. I originally read that as, "Khakistocracy" and thought, "what a great name for the Russian version of The Gap." If a DNC lawyer actually did say that...so what? It doesn't seem to be factually incorrect but the reality is that it's not quite that simple. Bernie lost because he got millions of fewer votes than Hillary because his message didn't resonate with enough people. He and his acolytes can blame the DNC all they want, just like Hillary can blame Comey for her loss. Doesn't mean their accusations are true. Also, I just gotta say, that I'm not surprised that Salon is mentioning The Young Turks. They're pretty much the YouTube version of Salon, furiously and incessantly Regressive to the point of absurdity. I disagree. Unless this story picks up major steam in the mainstream media, nobody will care. There will be no significant political backlash to speak of, because most voters just won't care (mostly because they won't hear much about it). Hillary's remaining diehard supporters will roll their eyes while the eyes of Bernie's remaining diehard supporters will turn red with anger. Meanwhile, the majority of the party will recognize that the election is long over, that neither of those candidates will matter in the next election, and that there's new leadership in the DNC committed to operating more above-board and with transparency. LOL! And there it is, the go-to tactic of regressives and "bigoteers;" unleash a slew of ad hominem word salad insults delivered in a diaperload of smug sanctimony, even against their own party! It's both hilarious and sad. Having been a strong democratic supporter over the past few years, this type of behavior from a minority of our party is, frankly, disgusting and embarrassing. One of the Dems' major problems is this extreme section of the party; their own version of the alt-right/Tea Party. If they don't stop that cancer from growing and cut it out, it will continue to divide the party. They're too wrapped up in severe "us against them" virtue-signaling tribalism. There's no such thing as compromise. Everyone who doesn't completely agree with them is the enemy and must be bullied, shamed, attacked, and insulted. Sometimes it seems as though the problem is getting better and they're starting to turn on each other and eat their own; sort of the problem taking care of itself. Other times, I'm discouraged because it seems to be getting worse. Ebbs and flows, I suppose. The Tea Party destroyed the sanity and credibility of the Republican party, I'd hate for the Regressives to do the same to the Dems. Here's how Steven Pinker described it last year:
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Post by michaelw on May 13, 2017 20:25:03 GMT -5
This is the standard response that shows how Clinton supporters (and the DNC, as well) still don't get it, IMO.
It doesn't really matter why Sanders lost. The problem is that the DNC made a lot of people unhappy with their actions. Instead of addressing that, they rubbed salt in the wounds.
In a way, arguing that Clinton would've won anyway, regardless of DNC actions, is just a further argument that the DNC is incredibly stupid. They compromised their candidate without any real necessity for doing so. That doesn't instill confidence, in the slightest.
Doesn't seem like the new leadership is committed to that at all.
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Post by Optimus on May 13, 2017 20:52:49 GMT -5
This is the standard response that shows how Clinton supporters (and the DNC, as well) still don't get it, IMO. It doesn't really matter why Sanders lost. The problem is that the DNC made a lot of people unhappy with their actions. Instead of addressing that, they rubbed salt in the wounds. In a way, arguing that Clinton would've won anyway, regardless of DNC actions, is just a further argument that the DNC is incredibly stupid. They compromised their candidate without any real necessity for doing so. That doesn't instill confidence, in the slightest. Doesn't seem like the new leadership is committed to that at all. I was speaking more from the perspective of the average voter, not a "Clinton supporter" (I was never a strong supporter of her because I didn't think she was a great overall candidate). So, what do you mean that the DNC "made a lot of people unhappy." What constitutes "a lot" when we're talking about a voting bloc of roughly 65 million people? Does the average voter, democrat or republican, really know much about the DNC/RNC or care what those organizations do? Does the average voter have much of a grasp of all the "inside politics" bullshit that goes on around elections? I'd guess that they don't and that the "a lot" of people whom the DNC angered constitute a minority of the party; the portion that is heavily into politics and really care about all the ins and outs of the drama and political theater. That's just a guess on my part; I don't have data to support it, just anecdotal evidence. I agree that the DNC was inept during this past election. Waserman-Schultz was a terrible DNC chair and should've been fired before the race heated up. When I said that the issue is more complicated than simply "it's all the DNC's fault that Bernie lost," that's exactly what I meant. It is more complicated. I'm not convinced that, even if the DNC had stayed neutral, that Bernie would've won the nomination. I think it might've been a closer race. But I don't think that any shady behavior by the DNC was 100% responsible for swinging nearly 3 million votes from one candidate to the other. And, this DNC-Conspiracy Theory totally ignores the fact that several million liberal (supposedly) Millennials voted 3rd party in the last election. I suppose all of Stein's and Johnson's millions of votes were the direct result of the DNC's bias too, right? My opinion of it is summed up nicely by this Newsweek article on "The Myths Democrats Swallowed That Cost Them the Presidential Election:" The article goes into further detail about the Oppo research file that the RNC had on Sanders. It isn't pretty. Even though apparently most Bernie supporters voted for Hillary, I have a tough time believing that the same % of Hillary supporters would've voted for Bernie after hearing some of the dirt Repubs were gonna unleash on him, had he been the nominee: Again, I'm not saying the DNC did not act in a sketchy, foolish manner during the elections. But, I seriously doubt that their shadiness or bias had much of an appreciable impact on the average voter, because the average voter isn't that well-informed. The DNC's main screw up, in my opinion, was putting all of their chips in the Presidential basket and woefully neglecting local and state races. The Tea Party and its agenda are abhorrent, in my opinion, but they have dominated most major elections across the country for the past 7 years because they organized and put all of their efforts in winning, starting from the bottom up, not the top down.
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Post by michaelw on May 13, 2017 21:23:04 GMT -5
I've talked to a number of Clinton backers who were convinced that disgruntled Sanders supporters cost Clinton multiple states in the general. If we were to entertain that possibility, then that's a significant number, almost by definition.
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Post by Optimus on May 14, 2017 20:18:05 GMT -5
I've talked to a number of Clinton backers who were convinced that disgruntled Sanders supporters cost Clinton multiple states in the general. If we were to entertain that possibility, then that's a significant number, almost by definition. I've read research by Raymond Moody where a number of people were convinced they had near-death experiences where they saw the ghost of Elvis Presley. If we were to entertain that possibility, then that's a significant number, almost by definition. Translation: The plural of "anecdote" is not "evidence." Additionally, sometimes people's perspectives on certain issues are rather myopic and "echo chambery." If something seems like a big deal to people in that type of situation, they tend to erroneously believe that it is a big deal to everyone else too and are shocked to find out they're wrong about that. I understand and appreciate where you're coming from, but I just don't think that the types of meta-political issues that are interesting or important to wonks like you and me are even on the radar of the average voter. There are piles of studies and surveys showing that most voters are largely uninformed on politics in general (I'm actually reading one right now). I think it's safe to assume that the average voter neither knows much about nor gives much of a shit about the DNC or RNC nor are they influenced much by Beltway news stories about those organizations. That's a bit distressing, because it implies that most voters are cognitively lazy, but that's one of those harsh realities that I've learned to accept (even though it still irritates me to no end).
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Post by michaelw on May 14, 2017 21:08:27 GMT -5
Well, I don't have any hard data, but it really wouldn't surprise me if the number of Clinton supporters who blame Sanders supporters for Clinton's loss (or at least think Sanders supporters share some of the blame, along with Comey and others) is actually quite high. Do you disagree?
As for the analogy:
I don't think it's the same kind of thing, at all. A few people claiming to see the ghost of Elvis Presley doesn't mean anything. But imagine if Clinton had lost the election because she lost, say, the state of Michigan by two votes. And there were three disgruntled Sanders supporters who refused to vote for her because of the actions of the DNC. That's a significant number, because it swung the election (even though in absolute terms obviously three is a small number).
So by the logic of Clinton supporters who suspect that Sanders supporters didn't show up to vote for her and cost her the election, we're talking about something fairly significant, IMO.
But it doesn't have to be important to the average voter. Clinton lost multiple states by very small margins. Your statement above and the notion that Clinton's image was hurt by DNC actions are perfectly reconcilable, I think.
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Post by Amadan on May 16, 2017 9:23:08 GMT -5
I've talked to a number of Clinton backers who were convinced that disgruntled Sanders supporters cost Clinton multiple states in the general. If we were to entertain that possibility, then that's a significant number, almost by definition. Oh, really? I though it was the Russians. Or Comey. Here's a question - why should the DNC have been "neutral"? Their job is to promote the candidate with the best chance of winning. Clinton was a party insider who'd been supporting the party for years. Sanders was an outsider who held the DNC in contempt and only became a "Democrat" for purposes of running for President. No matter how much you hate Clinton or like Sanders (or think he might have won had X, Y, or Z been different), there's a reason that Clinton was the DNC's pick and it wasn't just "cronyism" (which, in this case, is another word for "Working with people we've been working with for years and have established relationships with, rather than upstarts who give us the finger at every opportunity and tell us how we're doing everything wrong").
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Post by Optimus on May 16, 2017 11:54:10 GMT -5
Well, I don't have any hard data, but it really wouldn't surprise me if the number of Clinton supporters who blame Sanders supporters for Clinton's loss (or at least think Sanders supporters share some of the blame, along with Comey and others) is actually quite high. Do you disagree? Do I disagree that there are Clinton supporters out there who blame Bernie supporters for the loss? No, I don't disagree that those people likely exist. I do disagree with their claim, though. I don't think Bernie supporters not showing up for Clinton (if that is what happened) is the reason Clinton lost. You missed the point, so perhaps I could've stated it better. But, I also think we're getting confused about which points each of us is responding to. My original post was purposely dismissive of the claim that the DNC somehow cost Bernie the primary. I don't believe that they did. I think that their influence in the primaries was negligible and that the claims from Bernie and his supporters that the DNC demonstrated overt bias that influenced voters is ridiculous straw-grasping. You then responded (incorrectly) that I was giving the "typical response" of a Clinton supporter who just "doesn't get it." That retort was, in my opinion, also ridiculous because it was far off the mark. You followed up by saying that, "The problem is that the DNC made a lot of people unhappy with their actions." How is that "the problem?" My original post was dismissing the lawsuit as nothing more than sour grapes (which I feel it is) and the quote of mine you were responding to was simply pointing out that the plaintiff's claim that one of the DNC's lawyers said something factually correct does little to support their claim that the DNC somehow manipulated the outcome of the primary. They have no tangible proof of that. So, your response about the DNC making a lot of people unhappy was a non-sequitur, at best, because it didn't actually address the point I was making. I then responded to a later claim in the article that the lawsuit would hurt the credibility of the DNC with voters. My position was that it wouldn't hurt the DNC's credibility with voters because most voters likely don't know much about the DNC nor give much of a shit about it. It's hard to hurt the credibility of an organization that most voters don't have much knowledge of or pay attention to. Your later response was that you've talked to a lot of Clinton supporters who believe that Bernie voters not voting cost Clinton the election. My point was, so what? Unless you or they can produce some hard data/evidence that their claims are true, then it's nothing but speculation in the form of anecdotes (just like the claims of seeing Elvis at death aren't proved true just because a lot of people say they saw him. Anecdotes are not evidence). The second part of your statement asserted that if we hypothetically entertain that your anecdote about talking to a lot of Clinton backers is true, then that is somehow proof that a lot of these people exist. My other point addressing that was, although you might know and have spoken to quite a few people who feel that Bernie cost Clinton the election, that could very well be because you are in a type of social environment that just happens to have a high concentration of people who feel that way. However, stepping out of that bubble to the larger population of democratic voters might show that the "large" number of people you know is actually relatively small within the entire population of Clinton voters. So, looking back on your responses to my other posts, it now seems to me that you didn't actually address the things I had said. Your responses were kind of non-sequiturs. I get that they believe that, I just don't believe that they are correct. When it comes to the claim that the DNC's actions (or inactions) during the primaries was somehow biased toward Clinton, I'm just not seeing much objective evidence of it. During the elections, I read stories where Bernie and some of his supporters interpreted rather innocuous or arguably ambiguous events as somehow definitive proof of a conspiracy, but the more information that came out about those events, the less convincing the Bernie camp's conspiracy theories sounded. Nevada caucus was somehow unfair? Those claims turned out to be bullshit. Bernie's fans didn't follow long-established rules. Their fault. Nobody's else's. The DNC didn't sponsor enough debates or were somehow biased in the logistics of those debates, which somehow cost Bernie the primary. Those claims are also bullshit:I'm not at all disagreeing that there are Clinton supporters who blame Bernie voters. I'm just disagreeing with the reality of their claims, just as I disagree with the reality of the claims from Bernie voters about why he lost. The major thing that I think diehard Clinton supporters share with diehard Bernie supporters (other than party affiliation for most of them) is that they both indulge in blame-shifting and conspiracy theory mongering about why their candidate lost. The real reason they both lost, in my opinion, is simply because not enough people were motivated enough by those candidates to show up to the polls to vote for them at the times and places that it mattered.
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Post by Don on May 16, 2017 16:00:03 GMT -5
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Post by michaelw on May 16, 2017 18:09:25 GMT -5
Here's a question - why should the DNC have been "neutral"? I'm more or less OK with the DNC not being neutral. It's when the lack of neutrality is combined with a claim that they are in fact neutral that I get bothered.
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