He sees every conflict as a dominate-or-be-dominated struggle. He does not have a mental concept of agreeing to disagree or exercising self-restraint for the common good.

Still, much better than letting BEELZEBITCH into power, amirite? Everyone who stayed home on Election Day, or voted for a joke candidate, has a hand in Trump. Not that they'll ever own up to it, though.

I did my duty and voted for her. Now I can feel emotionally manipulated and betrayed without hypocrisy!

Blah blah blah bad candidate cop-out blah blah blah it's the DNC's fault cop-out blah blah Bernie woulda won blah blah but her emails blah blah shrill blah pantsuits blah blah women are emotionally unstable and shit.

@ Bort, please blame Shrillary's ego for the current Cheeto in Chief.

She did not offer voters hungry for change what they wanted. She didn't take the battle to the Midwest. A voice like a dental drill also didn't help either. Her lurid past, didn't help either.

Pillager, you decided you were okay with Trump getting into office, and that is on you. Be a man and take responsibility for your choices.

"Everyone who stayed home on Election Day, or voted for a joke candidate, has a hand in Trump. Not that they'll ever own up to it, though."

You should probably read up on how our elections work.

Bort, you're the most consistent person on the site.

I'd do my usual and make fun of it, but at this point in the term, I'd rather let you know that I'd take every single Neoliberal Hillary Globalist in my coalition party of utopia before I'd take one single regressive authoritarian lefty.

By staying the course and not quadrupling down on the GOP playbook, you stayed one of the true good ones in the Democratic party.

If anything keeps me from hate-voting GOP in 2018, it's me, because I am not a fucking mororn, but if I were, it would be you.

Much love, dude.

It really is infuriating going back and reading the election cycle comments. Way too many anti-Republicans thought maintaining their indie cred was more important than voting for a non-joke candidate. Even Bernie recognized that it was the only way to beat Republicans

honest question from a canadian - can someone enlighten me about where the confidence that 'sanders would have won' comes from, considering that public outcry against social programs remains so strong that they actually had to take a public option out of obamacare in order to pass it?

He would have won because he'd have been the logical choice against Trump. Had he lost: antisemitism.

the GOP is good a drumming up social outcry and making it look a lot stronger than it really is. Most Americans would support social programs if they were backed by the right plan and the right leadership.

Hilary's biggest weakness was likely that she was seen as a boring, establishment, business-as-usual candidate with ties to Wall Street who was selected by her party because it was her "turn." This hurt her in a big way against Bernie, and later against Trump. Bernie didn't have any of those particular weaknesses, and so some say that he would have been a stronger candidate against Trump.

Not to mention that people actually seemed to enjoy voting for Bernie in the primaries. Lots of people even then were gritting their teeth voting for Hilary. Mainly because they thought she had a better chance of winning.

Fuck Trump, Clinton, and the DNC for choosing her. Bernie would have won.

"honest question from a canadian - can someone enlighten me about where the confidence that 'sanders would have won' comes from, considering that public outcry against social programs remains so strong that they actually had to take a public option out of obamacare in order to pass it?"

Two reasons:

1) When you're very enthusiastic about something, you can't imagine anyone NOT being comparably enthusiastic, or at least well-disposed.

2) Bernie polls very well, and the assumption is that he would continue to poll well through Election Day. It's not a good assumption. He's never faced the sort of smear machine that can turn war heroes into war criminals (John Kerry), and worse, all indications are that he's too brittle and humorless to know how to deal.

"By staying the course and not quadrupling down on the GOP playbook, you stayed one of the true good ones in the Democratic party."

Thanks! Not sure what I'm doing right, but I'll take it.

"Fuck Trump, Clinton, and the DNC for choosing her. Bernie would have won."

VOTERS chose her. (And in fact they chose her TWICE, but Electoral College.) Please tell me why you think the will of the voters should be rejected in favor of your preferences, and how that's any better than what the Republicans try to do.

For extra credit, please tell me why Bernie still carries any credibility with you when he first considered superdelegates an undemocratic force and then pinned his hopes on them to support him counter to the will of the voters. Because, DAY-um.

"honest question from a canadian - can someone enlighten me about where the confidence that 'sanders would have won' comes from, considering that public outcry against social programs remains so strong that they actually had to take a public option out of obamacare in order to pass it?"

Bort's right, and Raggamuffin's right. Bernie supporters -- perhaps because they skew young, perhaps because they live in blue states and move in blue circles -- seem not to have realized that the United States has moved quickly and steadily to the political right since 1980 and might as well continue to do so. The best lefties have been able to do in this situation, outside of gay rights, is hold back a party that, if it could, would eliminate constraints on business, gut social welfare programs, and reduce the power of labor to an absolute minimum.

I think Raggamuffin's right in that the old joke is right: Americans hate government but sometimes like what it does for them. It may be that the only way that we'll get our social programs in the future is from sort of Bismarckian/Peronist "welfare socialism on the right" deal. Even Trump announced "insurance for everybody" before he went and fucked up whatever that was supposed to be.

It's not that Americans hate welfare: they hate welfare going to the wrong people, namely people who don't "deserve it." This might be interpreted as the usual conservative complaints against government complaints against waste an inefficiency. If only, though. Given the United States class and race matrices, it can usually be reduced to race bias and "good for me but not for thee" specious hypocrisy. Since working-class white people don't face too bright a future these days and are getting absolutely destroyed by a narcotics epidemic, you'd think that this would be a time where they'd stop that petty shit and pass a law that would every American some access to mental health care. But you'd be wrong.

Not to go on, Shanghai, but I think that one of the reason that Bernie cheerleading continues in some quarters is that it allows some people to ignore the fact that they live in a country in which sixty-two million Americans felt, to some degree, that Donald J. Trump would make an acceptable president. Why deal with a flabbergasting statistic like that when you can just yell at centrist Democrats and blame everything on them instead?

Stars, cake, and ice cream for Miss Henson's 6th grade class's second post. So long as people can focus on BEELZEBITCH and how it's all her fault, they don't have to examine their own role in Trump's victory.

Except, the Left was sitting out winnable elections in 2010 and 2014 too, and Hillary wasn't a factor in either year. It's a shame they refused to learn from either election, because we wouldn't have Trump in office today.

Nay Bort. The Clinton brand of Triangulation fails when the candidate you're running has the comparative charisma of a mollusk. She offered no real vision of what she was going to do for the working class. If the Dems continue to snub us, forget them.

Don't want my swing vote? That's fine. I can sweat this one out.

So if I'm reading you right -- and I'm pretty sure I am -- Hillary devoted some portion of time speaking to the needs of groups like women, blacks, and Mexicans, and every syllable she devoted to them is a betrayal or your interests. But that is in no way "identity politics" on your part.

@bort, Shrillary or Slick Willy never cared about minorities.


"This obsession with Russia is a tactic used by the ruling elite, and in particular the Democratic Party, to avoid facing a very unpleasant reality: that their unpopularity is the outcome of their policies of deindustrialization and the assault against working men and women and poor people of color. It is the result of disastrous trade agreements like NAFTA that abolished good-paying union jobs and shipped them to places like Mexico, where workers without benefits are paid $3.00 an hour. It is the result of the explosion of a system of mass incarceration, begun by Bill Clinton with the 1994 omnibus crime bill, and the tripling and quadrupling of prison sentences. It is the result of the slashing of basic government services, including, of course, welfare, that Clinton gutted; deregulation, a decaying infrastructure, including public schools, and the de facto tax boycott by corporations." Chris Hedges.

You can't just refer to African Americans as "Superpredators" & then ride the social justice band wagon to victory.

I'll sort of agree with Pillager here. It's true that Clinton would have offered a charisma-free, technocratic, very centrist and non-transformative presidency. Her best pitch, at the end of the day, was "I'm not Donald Trump and will keep things running another four years." Considering how bad a candidate and how bad a human being Donald is, it should have been enough, if barely. But it wasn't and that's too bad.

Do the Democrats have a viable plan to bring back manufacturing jobs, rebuild the social safety net, and stop the shrinkage of the middle class? No. But then every president since Carter has dealt with these issues and nobody's figured it out yet. At this point, I don't think the party knows where it wants to go, as Bernie-style solutions seem unpopular outside of a few very Blue cities, even among people who might benefit from them. Trump probably won points for at least recognizing this frustration in his voter base, even if he benefited from many of these problems personally and has neither the intelligence to understand them or the competence to solve them.

And Chris Hedges, who I consider a hysteric, can deal: if this Russia thing ends up removing the Trump family from office, it'll seem like a palace coup to a lot of people for whom The Donald can do not wrong. But if there was any sort of deal with the Russians involving dirt on Hillary for future legislative favors, I think that's pretty worthy of impeachment, and maybe a trial for treason for at least some of the major players. Donald himself would probably get a Nixon-style pardon to ensure domestic peace, but I can live with that.

"You can't just refer to African Americans as "Superpredators""

She didn't, but don't let facts get in your way of hating the woman who dared deny the white man his dream of the Democratic nomination.

"I'll sort of agree with Pillager here. It's true that Clinton would have offered a charisma-free, technocratic, very centrist and non-transformative presidency. Her best pitch, at the end of the day, was "I'm not Donald Trump and will keep things running another four years." "

Two things about this:

1) Hillary pitched plans, LOTS of them for every topic under the sun. It wasn't hard to learn about the plans either; beyond her Web site, she was happy to talk about them any time people weren't bugging her about her emails (BTW, it looks like her server may have been the only one in all of Washington that wasn't hacked).

2) But Hillary's plans don't interest Pillager; he decided long ago that he wasn't going to vote for the uppity bitch. He may be making like he rationally detected shortcomings in her campaign, but read anything Pillager has written about Hillary and he absolutely hates her. I even found a video from the 2008 campaign where, well:

https://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=36388

"I can't even imagine being the kind of person who'd vote for Hillary." - Pillager

@ Miss Henson's 6th grade class, Russia bought some ads on facebook. That's the joke. Trump isn't getting impeached. That pipe dream isn't going to rid us of Cheeto.

Bernie had New Deal Level Plans.

https://berniesanders.com/issues/

@ Bort, Denial much? Hillary is a Goldwater girl. Remember Goldwater? The nutcase who opposed the Civil Rights Act? Hillary wanted him elected. She's never changed deep down. Are you that blind?

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/270811-clinto n-i-shouldnt-have-used-the-superpredator-remark

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/02/2 5/clinton-heckled-by-black-lives-matter-activist/?utm_term=.c5308e 59044d

http://time.com/4238230/hillary-clinton-black-lives-matter-sup erpredator/

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ronda-lee/hillarys-superpredato r-comment_b_9655052.html

Why can't you see her for what she really is?

Well Pillager, if Hillary's a bigot, then so is Bernie. Remember when he said the Crime Bill was intended to deal with "deeply sick and sociopathic", "horribly violent" people? So that's Bernie saying that blacks are deeply sick and sociopathic, and horribly violent.

... oh wait, Bernie didn't at any point say that he was referring to all blacks, much less all young urban blacks? Well guess what: neither did Hillary. I know you wish she did so you could maintain a flimsy pretense of caring about blacks, but nope, she didn't say it.

Oh, and if Hillary's a Goldwater Girl, then Bernie advocates raping women, based on writings of his from the 1970s. See what a fucktarded game this is? Except that you and yours think it's meaningful discussion when your side does it. Really, it's all your side's got.

@ Bort, Bernie marched for civil rights & was arrested. That alone garners him more SJW brownie points.


Lastly, Bernie wrote a few lurid things down. Bill Clinton actually acted on them.


That's just another reason of many, why the Clinton Dynasty was extinguished.

"Bernie marched for civil rights & was arrested. That alone garners him more SJW brownie points."

Have you ever read what blacks think about that? Do you even care what they think, or is that just a talking point you like to play like a Magic The Gathering card? Lord knows you've done nothing but sneer about "identity politics" except when you're trying to make like Bernie is a saint. Black voters are a lot smarter about this than you would imagine:

http://verysmartbrothas.com/maybe-black-people-arent-feeling-b ernie-sanders-because-were-tired-of-people-saying-we-should-be/

@ Bort. We were smart enough to pick a candidate would have beaten Trump & not call potential swing voters a "Basket of Deplorables" or dedicate a speech to rail against a cartoon frog.

or hologram Tupac depending how we're feeling.

holo Redd Foxx has my vote

Honestly at this point, my fantasy is abolishing the idea of states altogether.

More realistically (but still impossible), doing away with the inflated representation that red states get. No more senate, ending gerrymandering, and a pony.

I like the idea of the Electoral College, in abstract, as a way to make sure that candidates who win have broad appeal. The risk of a straight popular vote is that a candidate can be a monster to 49% of the country just as long as he or she can scrape together 51% overall from whatever corners of the country. The Electoral College at least theoretically favors candidates who can win over a variety of demographic combinations.

In practice, I'm mad at the Electoral College over this most recent election, but I realize the Electoral College isn't the problem. Yeah there are weighting issues with the EC, but if Trump won in the EC it's because he did just as I said: he won in a wide variety of demographic combinations. The problem remains the electorate. And as just a reminder, if Jill Stein's droogs had just voted responsibly in three states, or if 12% of Bernie voters hadn't gone on to vote for Trump in those three states, we'd have President Clinton: Pants Suit Edition, and we could say the Electoral College did a good job.

>>>The risk of a straight popular vote is that a candidate can be a monster to 49% of the country just as long as he or she can scrape together 51% overall from whatever corners of the country.


Which is noithing at all like the present situation.

>>>n practice, I'm mad at the Electoral College over this most recent election, but I realize the Electoral College isn't the problem. Yeah there are weighting issues with the EC, but if Trump won in the EC it's because he did just as I said: he won in a wide variety of demographic combinations.

The horrible truth is that there is practically no one over the age of 18 who didn't contribute to this disaster, and that includes certain people who would be pushing 300 if they were still around to see it, and that includes me, occasionally provoking angry people on the internet just to make them angrier. It includes Hillary and Bernie and Roger Ailes

And you know what? Maybe it was the fucking Russians. I've only seen one person actually suggest that Putin changed the outcome, but that person was Richard Clarke, remember him? The guy who tried to warn the Bush White House to forget Saddam and concentrate on Bin laden? He said that the targeting of individual voters on Facebook was "psychological warfare, and it succeeded." Consider the surgical precision of victory in the swing states, and consider Trump's attempt to cover up the weirdness of it all with a pathetic lie about voter fraud. I'm not saying that it happened. I'm saying that it may have happened, and it needs to be said.

And the thing that frightens me, dosupersitionswn in the deep, tribal part of myself that still believes in superstitions like God, is that we deserve it. I'm not going to go into the reasons why, but they are legion, and we all know what they are.

What the electoral college does in reality is let a candidate be an absolute monster to 53% or more of the country as long as they can dupe a mere 10% of the densest people in the country: swing state swing voters (the other 37% being indoctrinated death cultists who will never not support the GOP).


Every argument in favor of the electoral college is only theoretical and has never happened.

Every argument against it happens in every single presidential election.

You're right, but that doesn't stop me from feeling a bit nervous.

You figure he'll last four years? I'm beginning to hope, now that Bob Corker told the Times that nobody on the (R) side of the Senate likes or trusts him and the Dems are not going to go along with him on his wall-for-Dreamers pledge, that he'll just get frustrated and quit. Not over that, but there'lll be a lot more of that stuff coming. But I'm probably just getting my hopes up.

I'm not sure if he'll last a term or not. I suspect not, and I think he'll quit before he's ousted. And of course, when he quits it will be a "win".

we are all waiting to see if he croaks with rapt attention

This was very wishful thinking :(