Bernie Sanders

[santafe2]

Re: why I don't hate Hillary

Woody, you're missing the best reason to vote for Hillary:

There's a very good chance that the wheels are gonna come off in 2017 or 2018. Whomever is president at the time will get blamed for the crash and become the most hated, reviled president in American History. Let it happen to Hillary, not to Sanders.

As far as the November election goes, I believe the die is cast. There's a slim chance either Clinton or Trump will not be running but as Sanders said today, the path to victory for him is "very narrow". Like Trump, no one gave Sanders any chance of mounting a serious run for the presidency and both have proven conventional wisdom incorrect. And both ran primaries without taking dark money.

That said, we have a choice between only two people and I will choose HRC in November. The Democratic platform will be partly shaped by Sanders. His strong run this spring and his political savvy will not allow them to ignore his issues or his massive millennial following. He's now an official member of the Warren wing of the Democratic party.

I think Sanders will work hard this summer and fall, not so much for Clinton but for the down ticket races. Democrats have a good chance to retake the Senate with a good voter turnout and with a Democrat in the White House, reform the Supreme Court. It's not crazy to think that the family who has benefited most from Wall Street will take down Wall Street to ensure they're remembered fondly.

Sanders was the first volley, not our best last hope. For anyone thinking the end is coming soon it's good to remember that the end can only come once and faced with it, everyone will work much more diligently to keep it from happening.

It could have been much worse. It could have been HRC against the lizard king, Cruz. If that were the case, we'd get nothing from the Clintons because they'd know we were just lucky to get their version of awful instead of Sharia Ted. Running against Trump she will understand that the Clintons better get real or the Clintons will never matter.

There have been some very ugly elections in the US but none of us has ever experienced a nasty election like the one we're about to experience. We'll get a chastised politician or an old Justin Bieber crashing his nuke powered Ferrari into other countries. As I said, I'll vote for HRC.

[jk]

Re: why I don't hate Hillary

well said, santafe. i wish i shared your optimism.

[Woodsman]

Re: why I don't hate Hillary

well said, santafe. i wish i shared your optimism.

I can't agree. I don't see a Clinton controlled Democratic Party giving Bernie and his supporters the time of day. They'll stiff arm them the first chance they get, starting at the convention, with an overt ufck you gesture designed to show them their choices:

a. back of the line
b. the door

I think Democrat apparatchiks work under the assumption that a very large number of supporters of Bernie Sanders will never vote for Hillary Clinton. Most are not partisan Democrats or even claim an affinity to the Democratic Party, about which there is no shortage of things to despise.

The Democrat nomenklatura operate with the view that the Sanders people are in it to nominate Sanders only. They point to the fact that Sanders himself joined the party for the first time only last year, in his seventies.

As the Democrat elite see it, if Sanders were not on the ballot, a large share of his supports simply would not vote as they have no political reason to support Clinton. As such, they have no reason to mollify them beyond the convention.

[santafe2]

Re: why I don't hate Hillary

I can't agree. I don't see a Clinton controlled Democratic Party giving Bernie and his supporters the time of day. They'll stiff arm them the first chance they get, starting at the convention, with an overt ufck you gesture designed to show them their choices:

a. back of the line
b. the door

I think Democrat apparatchiks work under the assumption that a very large number of supporters of Bernie Sanders will never vote for Hillary Clinton. Most are not partisan Democrats or even claim an affinity to the Democratic Party, about which there is no shortage of things to despise.

The Democrat nomenklatura operate with the view that the Sanders people are in it to nominate Sanders only. They point to the fact that Sanders himself joined the party for the first time only last year, in his seventies.

As the Democrat elite see it, if Sanders were not on the ballot, a large share of his supports simply would not vote as they have no political reason to support Clinton. As such, they have no reason to mollify them beyond the convention.

I hope you're incorrect Woodsman.

[jk]

Re: why I don't hate Hillary

my impression is that sanders' support has been strongest among 2 groups [please correct me if i'm wrong]: liberal enclaves like college towns, and the young. the latter have historically been low turnout, and will likely relapse to that condition. the former will likely fall in line to oppose trump. this analysis is more consistent with woodsman's than santafe's.

[DSpencer]

Re: Why is Hillary winning?

Why Did I Vote Hillary?
1. Full disclosure: I've met her. And when the second-most powerful woman (arguably, next to Angela Merkel, IMO) in the world smiles at you, says, "You must be ____. I love your father," my knees get weak and I forget how angry I am that Eric Holder just got his job back at the lobbying firm where he can represent the banks he didn't prosecute. It happened. And I spent nearly an hour with her, talking about our economy, the rust belt, and football (yes, football). I just couldn't go there.

I'm trying to be polite, but wow. Your knees get weak? Chris Matthews, is that you?

I totally get how you would refrain from confronting her face to face about political corruption. I myself have been in the room with Jamie Dimon and resisted the urge to flip my table, throw my drink and scream obscenities. But you know that you aren't required to vote at all right? Just because you shoot the breeze about football doesn't mean you have to actually vote for her to be the President of the United States.

It's like the "Obama is my homeboy" situation all over again. Sure if I'd met him before knowing anything about him we could have shared a joint, shot some hoops and it would have been a swell time, but what's that have to do with being President? I just don't get why people think that if they meet a candidate in person who doesn't spit in their face that suddenly that person is qualified to be the President.

If you want to vote for a rich, old, white woman who smiles a lot and talks nice, but is also a known felon, why not just vote for Martha Stewart?

[davidstvz]

Re: Why is Hillary winning?

My first choice was Sanders, but a Facebook friend's rigorous analysis convinced me months ago that he had no shot of actually winning despite doing relatively well considering. Call me crazy, but I've been on the Trump train since then. I'm a little worried that Trump will cause the wheels to fall off, but only sooner rather than later. If it's going to happen, let's get it over with. As for Clinton, I wouldn't vote for her just on general principle just as I wouldn't have voted for Jeb! I'm sick of dynasties.

[Woodsman]

From Sanders to Trump - What a Long Strange Trip it'll Be

... Call me crazy, but I've been on the Trump train since then. I'm a little worried that Trump will cause the wheels to fall off, but only sooner rather than later. If it's going to happen, let's get it over with. As for Clinton, I wouldn't vote for her just on general principle just as I wouldn't have voted for Jeb! I'm sick of dynasties.

Crazy like a fox. Wouldn't it be a kick in the ass if The Donald actually did the obvious thing - which is the only thing he knows how to do, btw - and build baby build. Build a wall, and roads, bridges, dams, and every manner of infrastructure, doing what Sanders wants to do but likely never could. By spending gobs of dollars to goose aggregate demand and pull us out of deflationary depression, hell put a big fat "T" on every one if you'd like, he'd secure the old "Reagan Democrat" block so firmly he could build a dynasty of his own.

And wouldn't this be a nice sight every day as Fox News (or whatever Trump-leaning org that replaces it) covers the daily 2025 calendar of President Ivanka Trump-Kushner:



Rump Treasury Secretary Carl Icahn seems to have it right:

Additionally, worrying about a deficit when there is no significant inflation and the dollar remains the global reserve currency is not a smart way to govern, Icahn said, adding that "a country is not a company."

While a company would go bankrupt if it owed too much money, the same could not be said of the United States anytime soon, Icahn explained, reiterating that he can't "understand this obsession" that many Republican politicians have with the deficit.

"They keep saying we owe all this money to China, but we're really not going to pay it back ever in a normal way," Icahn said. "So China decides 'I want my money back.' OK, well how do you want it back? You want dollar bills, you want Treasurys, what do you want?"

That said, Icahn cautioned that he was not advocating for the government to "go crazy and borrow money and have money floating around and have rampant inflation."

"Everything has equilibrium, everything has a middle ground, and we are so obsessed with that deficit," Icahn said. "And I never thought I'd agree completely with guys like (economist Paul) Krugman, but in this sense he's sort of right: I mean, you absolutely need fiscal stimulus in this economy."

Despite those comments disparaging one of the key arguments of many Republican politicians, Icahn had come out in support of the party's presidential front-runner.

Of fellow billionaire Trump, Icahn said the "right-wing establishment" doesn't like him in part because he's a pragmatist.

"He's going to do for this economy what should be done," Icahn said...

Icahn: Republicans don’t understand economics and it’s killing the country

[jk]

Re: From Sanders to Trump - What a Long Strange Trip it'll Be

the right wing pols can dismiss the likes of krugman, but given that they worship at the altar of mammon, it will be hard for them to say they know better than self-made billionaire icahn.

and trump has talked about our "disgusting" infrastructure. only a republican can drive a huge infrastructure spend, just as it took nixon to open up relations with china.

[Woodsman]

Re: From Sanders to Trump - What a Long Strange Trip it'll Be

... only a republican can drive a huge infrastructure spend, just as it took nixon to open up relations with china.

And the Trumpet blows sweet music on foreign policy:

...One of the most interesting little communications in there was him basically saying "people who supported the Iraq War will not have jobs in my administration." He's made a pretty clear declaration: Neoconservatives, don't come crawling to me. I thought that was fascinating because normally what [candidates] want is [for] everyone to clamor onto the bandwagon. He clearly said "don't bother."

...I wouldn't classify [Trump] as one, but nevertheless, for anyone out there who had doubts about Iraq, finally there's a [candidate] who recognizes that some of these [interventions] don't work out well.

There are some [Republicans] that I can imagine moving his way—the kinds of people who are hawkish and tough, but [who]don't like nation building. The Republican Party is growing more protectionist, so those folks are out there. A lot of those people could very well show up and say,"I don't like what he said about economics, or this-or-that, but I can be for somebody who's tough and pro-American but not likely to get us into a bunch of goofy wars in the Middle East."

You don't have to be a Tea Partier or a libertarian to see that as a positive thing. There are folks who might find that an attractive option.

We Asked an Expert What We Actually Know About Donald Trump's Foreign Policy

Then there's this:

...Donald Trump slammed NATO for being “obsolete.” This week, as he swept closer to the GOP nomination, he softened that to “outdated” but repeated his call for changes — including making allies pay more. Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders similarly has argued that the United States should scale back its NATO commitments.

These ideas have drawn ferocious criticism from the defense and foreign policy establishments, including the Pentagon and former secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Victor Davis Hanson, a historian at the Hoover Institute, acknowledged the salience of Trump’s argument but then backflipped to argue for the organization’s continued relevance anyway: “A powerful Russia will always have to be watched. A dynamic and headstrong Germany will always have to be integrated into some sort of military alliance. And the United States will always have a natural self-interest in pre-emptively keeping kindred Europeans from killing each other.”

Yet there are good reasons to take Trump's and Sanders' arguments seriously. On one level, NATO really is obsolete. It was established in 1949 to ensure the collective defense of Western Europe against the threat of a Soviet invasion. At the time, this did not seem like a particularly remote possibility.

USA Today: Trump isn't always wrong on foreign policy

And as gobsmacking a notion as it is, the Nobel Peace Prize could be in the offering if The Donald manages to restore normalcy with Russia:

Moscow (CNN)After Donald Trump gave a much-anticipated foreign policy speech Wednesday, some of the most glowing reviews that he received were from a place that doesn't often see eye-to-eye with American politicians.

Trump's speech was more than well-received in Russia. In Moscow's Red Square, passersby speaking to CNN praised the New York tycoon. And Russian politicians from President Vladimir Putin on down have been quoted saying favorable things about the GOP presidential front-runner.

Putin recently called Trump "a brighter person, talented without a doubt." Trump returned the compliment saying: "I like him because he called me a genius. He said Trump is the real leader."

And in his address in Washington Wednesday, the billionaire businessman expressed hope about the potential for improvement in American-Russian relations.

"I believe an easing of tensions and improved relations with Russia, from a position of strength only, is possible," Trump said, though he added that the United States should be willing to walk away from the negotiating table if Russia is too demanding...

Donald Trump's foreign policy speech earns praise in Russia

Meanwhile, the sensible and responsible set know exactly what to do:

After years of central banks propping up the financial system and easing the borrowing conditions of national governments, one analyst has predicted that the next big wave of cash flooding an economy could come from increased military spending.

"Simple idea, what if (the next round of quantitative easing) shows up in the form of defense spending? And, I think we are seeing that," Pippa Malmgren, the founder of consultancy DRPM, told CNBC Wednesday. Malmgren - who served on President George W Bush's National Economic Council as an adviser on financial market issues - said that NATO, China, the U.S. and Europe had all hiked the budgets for their military. Europe, she added, had done so because of "the perception of (an) increasing threat from Russia."

QE4 is coming...and it could fund the next Cold War: Analyst

[vt]

Re: From Sanders to Trump - What a Long Strange Trip it'll Be

Trump White House

[Woodsman]

Re: From Sanders to Trump - What a Long Strange Trip it'll Be

Trump White House

No way he's going to live in that dump on 1600 Pennsylvania. Turn it into a museum, I bet. Maybe let the missus play Jackie O and redecorate. Nothing out of the public purse, mind you. Charge admission to non-citizens and pay the difference out of petty cash.

Gird your loins, friends. This is the new Trump White House.

[santafe2]

Re: From Sanders to Trump - What a Long Strange Trip it'll Be

Gird your loins, friends. This is the new Trump White House.

Yup, know it well. We stay at the JWM just down the street a couple of blocks from the House of Trump and that old White House. The timing of the opening is well calculated but he just didn't use enough gold. Maybe he's planning to use real gold from Fort Knox. All Trump has to do is wind up the crazy wing of the Republican party with accusations that "There is no gold in Fort Knox!". I'm sure the shadow government will give him enough to gold leaf the whole place just so he'll focus on something else.

Of course, he has to get elected and that's going to be a good trick given his negatives. As Trevor Noah noted on the Daily Show, Trump has to play the racist douchebag card because we all have to play the cards we're dealt.

[Woodsman]

Re: From Sanders to Trump - What a Long Strange Trip it'll Be

...Of course, he has to get elected and that's going to be a good trick given his negatives. As Trevor Noah noted on the Daily Show, Trump has to play the racist douchebag card because we all have to play the cards we're dealt.

Call me racist douchebag come the Democratic convention, then. I'll have to hold my nose and check my shoes periodically, like I imagine many Clinton supporters do. Anyway, haven't you noticed? It's hip to switch!

If these neocon GOP douchebags can switch to Clinton after decades of crapping on her, I can jump on the Trump crazy train with no problem.

It's just a ride.

The Next Act of the Neocons

Are Neocons Getting Ready to Ally With Hillary Clinton?

By JACOB HEILBRUNNJULY 5, 2014
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Neocons like the historian Robert Kagan may be connecting with Hillary Clinton to try to regain influence in foreign policy.CreditLeft, Stephanie Sinclair/VII via Corbis; right, Colin McPherson/Corbis

WASHINGTON — AFTER nearly a decade in the political wilderness, the neoconservative movement is back, using the turmoil in Iraq and Ukraine to claim that it is President Obama, not the movement’s interventionist foreign policy that dominated early George W. Bush-era Washington, that bears responsibility for the current round of global crises.

Even as they castigate Mr. Obama, the neocons may be preparing a more brazen feat: aligning themselves with Hillary Rodham Clinton and her nascent presidential campaign, in a bid to return to the driver’s seat of American foreign policy.

To be sure, the careers and reputations of the older generation of neocons — Paul D. Wolfowitz, L. Paul Bremer III, Douglas J. Feith, Richard N. Perle — are permanently buried in the sands of Iraq. And not all of them are eager to switch parties: In April, William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, said that as president Mrs. Clinton would “be a dutiful chaperone of further American decline.”

But others appear to envisage a different direction — one that might allow them to restore the neocon brand, at a time when their erstwhile home in the Republican Party is turning away from its traditional interventionist foreign policy.

It’s not as outlandish as it may sound. Consider the historian Robert Kagan, the author of a recent,roundly praised article in The New Republic that amounted to a neo-neocon manifesto. He has not only avoided the vitriolic tone that has afflicted some of his intellectual brethren but also co-founded an influential bipartisan advisory group during Mrs. Clinton’s time at the State Department.

Mr. Kagan has also been careful to avoid landing at standard-issue neocon think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute; instead, he’s a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, that citadel of liberalism headed by Strobe Talbott, who was deputy secretary of state under President Bill Clinton and is considered a strong candidate to become secretary of state in a new Democratic administration. (Mr. Talbott called the Kagan article “magisterial,” in what amounts to a public baptism into the liberal establishment.)

Perhaps most significantly, Mr. Kagan and others have insisted on maintaining the link between modern neoconservatism and its roots in muscular Cold War liberalism. Among other things, he has frequently praised Harry S. Truman’s secretary of state, Dean Acheson, drawing a line from him straight to the neocons’ favorite president: “It was not Eisenhower or Kennedy or Nixon but Reagan whose policies most resembled those of Acheson and Truman.”

Other neocons have followed Mr. Kagan’s careful centrism and respect for Mrs. Clinton. Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted in The New Republic this year that “it is clear that in administration councils she was a principled voice for a strong stand on controversial issues, whether supporting the Afghan surge or the intervention in Libya.”

And the thing is, these neocons have a point. Mrs. Clinton voted for the Iraq war; supported sending arms to Syrian rebels; likened Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, to Adolf Hitler; wholeheartedly backs Israel; and stresses the importance of promoting democracy.

It’s easy to imagine Mrs. Clinton’s making room for the neocons in her administration. No one could charge her with being weak on national security with the likes of Robert Kagan on board.

Of course, the neocons’ latest change in tack is not just about intellectual affinity. Their longtime home, the Republican Party, where presidents and candidates from Reagan to Senator John McCain of Arizona supported large militaries and aggressive foreign policies, may well nominate for president Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has been beating an ever louder drum against American involvement abroad.

In response, Mark Salter, a former chief of staff to Senator McCain and a neocon fellow traveler, said that in the event of a Paul nomination, “Republican voters seriously concerned with national security would have no responsible recourse” but to support Mrs. Clinton for the presidency.

Still, Democratic liberal hawks, let alone the left, would have to swallow hard to accept any neocon conversion. Mrs. Clinton herself is already under fire for her foreign-policy views — the journalist Glenn Greenwald, among others, has condemned her as “like a neocon, practically.” And humanitarian interventionists like Samantha Power, the ambassador to the United Nations, who opposed the second Iraq war, recoil at the militaristic unilateralism of the neocons and their inveterate hostility to international institutions like the World Court.
But others in Mrs. Clinton’s orbit, like Michael A. McFaul, the former ambassador to Russia and now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a neocon haven at Stanford, are much more in line with thinkers like Mr. Kagan and Mr. Boot, especially when it comes to issues like promoting democracy and opposing Iran.

Far from ending, then, the neocon odyssey is about to continue. In 1972, Robert L. Bartley, the editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal and a man who championed the early neocon stalwarts, shrewdly diagnosed the movement as representing “something of a swing group between the two major parties.” Despite the partisan battles of the early 2000s, it is remarkable how very little has changed.

Jacob Heilbrunn is the editor of the National Interest and the author of “They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons.”

[lektrode]

Re: From Sanders to Trump - What a Long Strange Trip it'll Be

Call me racist douchebag come the Democratic convention, then.

+1
oh... come to think of it, he/santa already has (on a rant n rave thread ;)

I'll have to hold my nose and check my shoes periodically, like I imagine many Clinton supporters do. Anyway, haven't you noticed? It's hip to switch!

If these neocon GOP douchebags can switch to Clinton after decades of crapping on her, I can jump on the Trump crazy train with no problem.

It's just a ride.

thats the most HILARIOUS part of the Anybody But Trump clownfest clusterf__k - when that bunch can twist themselves into pretzel shapes to justify their idiotlogical perspectives (same as the demorat-liberal PC/anti-freespeech gestapo manages to do every day)

and here's another newsflash you WONT be seeing on bloomyville et al anytime soon:

The Oligarchy Is Tottering - Trump Tramples The Neocons' "False Song Of Globalism"