From the NYT:
Two advisers to Mr. Sanders said he thought Mrs. Clinton had said many of the right things at the meeting, but described him as concerned that she might embrace more politically moderate positions later if she thinks it necessary to win states like Florida, Ohio and Virginia.
The advisers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the campaign had not authorized them to speak, said Mr. Sanders felt no pressure to endorse Mrs. Clinton quickly. And he has leverage: He accrued about 12 million votes and nearly 1,900 delegates, and in a New York Times/CBS News poll last month, 28 percent of his supporters said they would not vote for Mrs. Clinton if she was the Democratic nominee. Mrs. Clinton picked up nearly 16 million votes and 2,800 delegates.
Two advisers to Mr. Sanders described him as concerned that Mrs. Clinton might say all the right things now but embrace more politically moderate positions later if she thinks it necessary to win states like Florida, Ohio and Virginia.
The advisers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the campaign had not authorized them to speak, said Mr. Sanders felt no pressure to endorse Mrs. Clinton quickly. He wants her to take steps to win his confidence in the five and a half weeks before the Democratic convention, where his voters and delegates expect him to speak and Clinton advisers hope he will give a full-throated speech backing her. (Emphasis mine)
There is nothing like the ego of an older white man. It is really something to see. He worked with Hillary Clinton for 8 years in the Senate, voted for her as Secretary of State, watched her win this primary handily, and he still feels able to demand that she "take steps to win his confidence" in order to receive his endorsement. I can not wait until Secretary Clinton, President Obama, and everyone else with two brain cells to rub together kicks this old crank to the curb.
39 comments:
I really liked Bernie in the beginning.
But now at the end, uhm... Not so much.
And I think the prospect of having that Cheetos-colored demagogic and bigoted Dictator-wannabe, will change the minds of a majority of that 28%.
And if it doesn't, they didn't have minds in the first place.
Hillary moving a bit to the center, is nothing like tRUMP moving that Overton Window to the right so far, it's a window in at outhouse located over a sewer line at the end of the property!
You have diminished the integrity I once had of this blog. How god damn tribal you are about this primary season. So un-nuanced in your observations. You should try reading Booman's blog (maybe you do and you just stubborn) for a perfect example of getting it right.
You have learned absolutely nothing about the Sanders campaign/movement. It has always stood for something more than the man. Always. That you still don't get that is just amazing. People in our movement want a progressive agenda and could care less about the Democratic Party,other than it is our only possible means for advancing it in this two party system.
I'll be voting for Clinton - as will most of the people in this movement. Some of us, smartly, won't see Clinton's general election win as a time to let off the gas for the next 4 years though. We'll be either working to come up with a candidate to run against her for 2020 or working to hold her accountable.
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/I-just-became-a-Democratfor-5-weeks-Heres-why.html
Many of us will work within the Democratic Party to make it a better party too.
So you have us all wrong and you have our candidate wrong. We are woring to advance a progressive agenda in this country. Are you?
No more no more mister nice blog.
The advisers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity... speaking to a corporate reporter. Isn't that a bit like those e-mails fools forward with a reply all?
I don't have a problem with this post, but are the authors of the second and third comments aware that the blog is being written by guest hosts this week?
Bernie is not a crank. He knows Clinton and how she operates only too well. Elizabeth Warren is equally realistic about our candidate. She just compartmentalizes her past disappointment with HRC better. I wish him luck in his dealings with her at the end game now. She is a means to an end. Nothing more. I'll vote for her because it is in my interest at this time to do so. If people are just not clapping hard enough for you right now, well, that's unfortunate. I'm sure there are other important things to agree about down the road. By the way, Clinton is making all the right sounds right now and I couldn't be more pleased. I think that the necessity for her to earn Sanders voters trust is a factor in that. That's a good thing. He doesn't deserve this rancid post Aimai. Nor do most of his supporters.
pbriggsiam -
If it's about the movement, not the man, why get annoyed with aimai? Her ire is aimed at Sanders, not his followers -- unless they support Trump by action or inaction. But you say you'll vote for Clinton, so what's the beef? As you say, the Democratic Party "is our only possible means for advancing it in this two party system," so keep active and make that progressive difference.
"Lord, give me the confidence of a mediocre white man."
So Bernie may not support HRC unless she takes positions that may cost Democrats the election...I just wonder if those who support this absurdity really think they are smarter than the nut cases who threaten the very fabric of America.
"You have diminished the integrity I once had of this blog"
Err.... What?
What can Bernie truthfully tell his supporters about Hillary Clinton? "She's not Trump. For now, that has to be enough."
But that wouldn't satisfy the Clintonistas. His endorsement would have to be enthusiastic. "She'll make a great President! She won't sell you out on TPP the second she gets the chance! She won't launch another war!"
Unknown: " ... But that wouldn't satisfy the Clintonistas. His endorsement would have to be enthusiastic. ... "
Bernie has dawdled and bargained and extorted long enough that:
A) It is clear to all that any support from Bernie would be reluctantly given
B) Bernie's (hypothetical) support is bought by quid pro quos,
Thus, Bernie's support would get discounted as not worth much (and less the longer Bernie bargains and dawdles.)
But, I would think that loyalty to friends or allies would preclude Bernie getting, for example, DWS' head on a platter. Other Bernie demands are also excessive and unlikely to happen. It would surprise me a lot if any Bernie endorsement or even significant support at all ever materializes, let alone enthusiastic support.
What can Bernie truthfully tell his supporters about Hillary Clinton? "She's not Trump. For now, that has to be enough."
Its this crap that makes my blood boil. That's right--people have to sack up and support the Democratic Nominee and all the down ballot Demcratic candidates and they have to do it without whining. They even have to do it enthusiastically! Oh the HUUUUUUUUUMANITY! No one has ever suffered like a Bernie voter denied the chance to cast his one, precious, ballot and put the savior of socialism over the top! Not the people mourning their dead in Orlando. Not the people Trump would deport or let his followers kill. Not the workers whose economy Trump would destroy. Not the people blown to bits when, in Betty Cracker's immortal phrase, the Combover Caligula gets pissed one morning that his hair isn't quite right.
Get a fucking clue. This is a struggle for control of a massive government with huge assets, liabilities, citizens, non citizens, crumbling infrastructure and international significance. If the nominating campaign had gone for Bernie I would have worked my heart out for him and donated a ton of money to him and I would have done it enthusiastically because he was the nominee of the only party capable of running this behemoth of a country. You are darned right I expect the same of Bernie and his followers when they lost the primary. Its the only moral stance to take. If you aren't so precious that you can't be bothered to keep your Candidate's word for him. Because you can bet your boots that when he accepted the King's Shilling and begged to use the Democratic Party as a vehicle for his campaign that he had to agree to support the eventual candidate, and wholeheartedly too, before they let him run as a Democrat.
>Mrs. Clinton might say all the right things now but embrace more politically moderate positions later if she thinks it necessary to win states like Florida, Ohio and Virginia.
Are we seriously pretending this isn't an extremely valid concern?
>He worked with Hillary Clinton for 8 years in the Senate, voted for her as Secretary of State
That's EXACTLY why he's skeptical. Anyone that's followed Mrs. Clinton's career knows she'll sell out liberal values the moment there's a chance to go drop bombs on brown people in another country. She's worked to reduce the minimum wage in places like Haiti. She OPPOSES single-payer health care, and if at all possible she'll CUT Social Security payouts, not increase them, something even President Obama has evolved on. She's a Reagan Democrat, not a Democratic Democrat. The moment she secures an endorsement from Bernie she's liable to throw him and his under the bus. I think she'd gladly sacrifice the votes of a million actual Democrats in order to secure the vote of a thousand moderate Republicans (all of whom, take note Aimai, will be those evil old white guys you have so much disdain for).
Excellent post, aimai. I am sick to fucking death of his arrogance and narcissism. Fortunately, I don't think he has a lot of leverage anymore; the party has moved on without him, and now he's just a Japanese soldier on some remote Pacific island who hasn't heard yet that the war is long over.
Can't wait until she passes TTP, and her fanboys call anyone who didn't think she would a unicorn hunter expecting the impossible.
You don't have to be Nostradamus to see that coming.
Pretty much every four years the Democratic nominating process coughs up a challenge from the left: Jesse Jackson, Ted Kennedy, Bill Bradley, Howard Dean etc. It's a predictable ecological niche. This time, Bernie - the only volunteer this time out.
Bernie has such a grandiose self image that his predictable success went to his head. His behavior all along has reflected his grandiosity - stalking and accosting the Pope as just one example. Sad.
Save your breath, Dave. Haven't you been listening? You don't have a "fucking clue." Just shut up and sing.
No, anyone who thinks she's a Reagan Democrat does not have a fucking clue. Literally does not have a fucking clue. I have to tip my hat to my former Congressman, Barney Frank (who also has Bernie's number) and say "I have no more interest in debating with you than I would with a dining room table." You are displaying that much sentience.
Bernie's losing me.
He's got more of a voice than he ever could have hoped for.
Instead of locking in those gains he's acting like a pissed off old white guy and IMHO throwing a lot of it away.
I dig the policy. I'm not digging the approach.
I agree with you, FarmerG, they were huge gains. And I'm grateful to him for opening up a path for Democratic Politicians to be more progressive than they've ever dreamed of being (at least those from some swing states). And I also love the way Bernie tried, although less really than his followers thought he was, to bring a Progressive message to Red States. The thing is that his message broke down because he didn't bring it South, to Red States with large African American populations. That's because he couldn't afford to, and didn't want to, and he wanted to pick up easy wins in largely white states. That's ok. I'm not bitching about the campaign strategy--it was a great strategy. But if what Bernie wanted to do was to bring along Trump's voters he was going to have to go into the belly of the beast and compete head to head with Trump in Red states and fight it out with his voters over whether they preferred an economically inclusive message with black people and women involved, or whether they only wanted Trump's populism plus racism.
Because Hillary Clinton is going to have to fight THAT election--the election in which POC/Women/Progressives are lined up on one side and Trump's angry white male voters are lined up on the other. And when she wins she is going to have to govern with the entire country in mind, and their very diverse needs, not just the narrow Bernie coalition of greens/rand paul people/angry white tech dudes/etc...
"Hillary moving a bit to the center, is nothing like tRUMP moving that Overton Window to the right..."
And there you have it. Clinton moving to the center to get the votes of "moderate conservatives" is a better strategy than trying to get the votes of progressive voters.
We can use many issues to show the folly of this, but I'll just use abortion.
To get elected, the candidate needs to spurn the progressives, who believe 100% that women have the right to a legal and safe medical procedure, in favor of the support of "moderates", who just want to make it as difficult as possible for women to do so, but don't want to outlaw abortion completely. (They're "moderates', after all, not Neanderthals.
If you really believe this, Victor, show your math. How does pragmatically ceding progressive stances help pass progressive policy?
Robert--this is a joke, right? Hillary Clinton just gave the first ever speech by a presumptive nominee at Planned Parenthood, thanking them and pledging to support them. She is supported by them, and by NARAL. She has a lifetime of working for women's rights specifically with respect to Abortion. Where the fuck do you get off, as a white man (and I bet you are) lecturing any of the rest of us about women's rights and spurning a historic figure like Hillary Clinton who made her bones as a feminist while you were probably still in diapers?
Also, since this is implicit in your argument, lets talk about why a candidate--any candidate, has to move in any direction during any election. A candidate has an obligation to try to win. They have to go for the largest number of votes in order to do so. Stay with me here, this is complicated stuff! If progressive vote en bloc they can attract a candidate to come and promise them shit. If progressives divide up into smaller and smaller groups of purer and more divided romantics--lets call them the Judean People's Liberation Front and the People's Front of Judean Liberation--and some section decide to sit it out then the candidate has to go looking for votes somewhere else.
Even the sainted Bernie used this horrifying method. He was searching for the mythically important votes of angry white reagan democrats, white working class men specifically, who he thought might be attracted to his message of economic equality and thus give him their votes. And he scanted the votes of women and African American women specifically in doing it. But he failed to realize that the white male vote is a split vote, too, with some of it looking for racism with its populism and some of it being already progressive.
Have to run, this has been fun but my mother's house has been broken into!
aimai, there's no doubt that Bernie would have been nothing but a footnote had he not run as a Democrat. The question is whether, having done so, he "owes" the party for the exposure he derived from it. I don't think he does, although I can respect arguments on the other side.
Sorry about your mom, aimai.
I was just asking for the math. How does getting the votes of "moderates", who want to make it as difficult as possible for women to get an abortion, improve the chances of getting progressive policies enacted? These moderate voters are going to expect Clinton to represent their views.
If you're saying they should know Clinton by now, that being a feminist trumps (so to speak) their representation--after all, a tiger can't change her stripes--then you sound like a Bernie Bro who has seen how servile Clinton has been to Wall Street and believes she will continue to be so.
If, OTOH, you're just saying she's tacking to the center to get the votes of moderates, because those to the left of her will never vote for Trump because she's as good a choice as they have, then all of your hand-wringing about "purity" voters is a waste of time.
BTW, i think your hand-wringing IS a waste of time. Based on demographics alone, Clinton will win in November by a landslide. What states, exactly, will Trump win that Romney didn't? If there is even one, they should burn the Democratic Party to the ground and start over. Sincerely.
Small quibble. There was only a two-year overlap (2007-2008) in senatorial service between Clinton and Sanders. In the first six years of the decade, Jim Jeffords held the seat now occupied by Sanders. Moreover, for much of those two years, Clinton was rarely in the Senate since she was usually on the campaign trail running for president.
Who is more boldly sexist than an older white woman?
"There is nothing like the ego of an older white man. It is really something to see. He worked with Hillary Clinton for 8 years in the Senate, voted for her as Secretary of State, watched her win this primary handily, and he still feels able to demand that she "take steps to win his confidence" in order to receive his endorsement. I can not wait until Secretary Clinton, President Obama, and everyone else with two brain cells to rub together kicks this old crank to the curb."
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
That's perfect in every way, especially "there is nothing like the ego of an older white man" and "kicks this old crank to the curb".
The only change I'd make is to eliminate "older".
Aimai, the Sanders movement owes nothing to the Democratic Party and we are certainly not going to listen to a foul-mouthed blogger trying to make the case otherwise.
We are working for a progressive agenda. We are realistic in our goals and will be realistic in doing the hard work of changing the Democratic Party both from within and out. This is all about power politics, leveraging what we've gained in this primary....in order to advance this agenda.
I'm surprised you don't get that. You seem pretty smart. Quit taking it so personal because your precious party or precious candidate aren't being given 100% fealty.
What Briggs said!
Sarandon should smack you, Albright and Steinem then kick you to the collapsing center.
"Aimai, the Sanders movement owes nothing to the Democratic Party."
I'll just leave this here, pbriggsiam. Because if it wasn't for the Democratic National Committee, Bernie Sanders' 'outsider' primary campaign would never, ever, have happened.
'you're a white man, so how dare you lecture us on issue X'
is not a winning argument - it's sexist and racist.
it is sad that this even has to be pointed out.
can't wait for nomoremister to return b/c the guestblogging isn't great
Yep, men have no standing to lecture women about women's rights or to deliberately lie about a female candidate's approach to advancing women's rights--particularly when that approach is more radical than any other viable presidential candidate has ever before articulated--in order to big up their male candidate. Sanders himself has played the More Feminist Than Thou game with other female democrats before, and it's hilarious that Clinton is being maligned as the anti-woman panderer when Sanders's own platform regarding anything other than the economy and a few select social issues is only skin deep.
As aimai notes, Sanders's campaign had a similarly pragmatic approach to courting white and working-class and young votes (almost like he plays oft-whinged-about rarely-understood Identity Politics, too!) and this dismissal of everyone else was handwaved away as a good strategy if it helped him win because winning's what matters. So it's sauce for the gander time. If you actually want the Democrat to win, you'll have to put up with what every successful candidate has always done: try to win over whom they need to win over. Also, a hearty lol in the direction of this fear about Clinton "betraying" her promises to Sanders in exchange for Florida, Virginia, and Ohio. You know... the states she won handily against him and one's she'd very much like to win against Trump. If we're acknowledging they're important, I can't see how Sanders would behave any differently if he got the nomination. Is it because women are considered duplicitous by nature, whereas when men lie for the greater good the lie is just and noble? Is it because Clinton herself has recently drifted leftwards? Isn't that what we all wanted out of the Sanders campaign? For her to be doing the very thing she is currently very much doing?
Saurs,
Aimai should make arguments wholly on the merits and not descend to screaming 'white male get out' ad hom.
Sorry that was lost on you.
Saurs,
Let's keep going.
'Sauce for the gander' - the entire paragraph is nothing but 'tu quoque' nonsense.
Another bad look for you, and the one you're attempting to defend.
I never defended Sanders, I never criticized Clinton, as you can see by my one previous post in the thread.
Are you also racist and sexist?
Saurs,
Aimai should make arguments wholly on the merits and not descend to screaming 'white male get out' ad hom.
Sorry that was lost on you.
The sexism and racism of Bernie's refusal to accept that President Obama is the head of the party, not his errand boy, and that Hillary Clinton is the winner of the primary, not the loser, is an "argument wholly on the merits" of his situation and behavior. And I am not the only one who thinks so. I don't make the argument because I am a woman --although the rampant sexism of Bernie's approach to Hillary Clinton is perhaps more obvious to me than to some of his male followers--but because I am reading carefully what other women, and African American Women (the actual base of the Democratic Party at this point) are saying about how they feel about Bernie refusing even to publicly congratulate Hillary Clinton, about Bernie using the President of the United States to be his broker w/r/t the convention and his concession speech. Its ungracious, its petty, its sexist and its racist--sorry if that makes you feel all sad in your unmarked male category place.
"You have diminished the integrity I once had of this blog. How god damn tribal you are about this primary season. So un-nuanced in your observations. You should try reading Booman's blog (maybe you do and you just stubborn) for a perfect example of getting it right.
You have learned absolutely nothing about the Sanders campaign/movement. It has always stood for something more than the man. Always. That you still don't get that is just amazing. People in our movement want a progressive agenda and could care less about the Democratic Party,other than it is our only possible means for advancing it in this two party system."
I know this, Sanders ran the whitest, least diverse Dem campaign in modern history. When he had a chance to dial back Weaver's statements about the southern voters not being important, he didn't.
He defines "establishment" as not buying what he's selling. How did he get to define liberalism or progressiveness? Who left him in charge?
And if you don't care enough about the weakest, poorest and most downtrodden of us to vote enthusiastically for the not Trump person in the race, it's about you, not them and you don't deserve to bestow yourself with the title "progressive."
aimai
The only thing at issue is whether you think the ad hom attack against 'white' and 'male' is somehow valid.
"its sexist and its racist"
by your own admission, but in irrelevant screed.
Your post is full of 'Bernie this, Bernie that' and '50 Million Frenchmen (sorry AA women) agree so it must be true'.
This doesn't address the above.
"Sanders thinks Obama is his errand boy" Really?
Is that the kind of psychodrama you'd like to engage in? Bernie is an anti-black racist?
Again, this does not address the question about white males.
"Sorry if that makes you feel..."
The classic non-apology, lacking an admission of wrong doing.
Moreover, my feelings are not relevant.
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