“The assumption going in is always that whatever an establishment politician says is golden and true. Whatever a progressive activist says is tarnished and lacks credibility. So, why is the question never asked in reverse — does the establishment have a purity test, or perhaps an impurity test?” That’s not it. The problem is that your side viewed not being liberal enough as being corporatist, sellout and conservative, so your wing voted STEIN, or didn’t vote at ALL, or wrote-in Bernie Sanders. Over 86% of your people in a poll you did said they wouldn’t vote for Hillary. How well did THAT work out for our country?
“That one, mandatory plank is that you cannot take corporate or PAC money. Over 80% of Democratic voters agree that money corrupts politics (in some polls, it’s more than 90%). Can you imagine a more popular litmus test? It’s not that complicated. You can disagree on healthcare, education, war … well, just about everything. But you cannot represent the donors over the voters!”
You’re not very smart. Wanna know why?
BECAUSE WHOMEVER SPENDS THE MOST MONEY IN A DOWN-TICKET ELECTION WINS. If you think you can win on just IDEAS alone, ask Russ Feingold, Zephyr Teachout, and others how well that worked. Overwhelmingly, time and time again, in Congressional elections, MONEY is what wins. Why do you think Congress has been CONTROLLED by the GOP? Because they always outspend Democrats in Senatorial elections, in SPECIAL elections, in Congressional elections, again and again. The GOP has more billionaires on their side, and therefore, they can easily afford to buy aaaaall the TV time they want, all the mail-in pamphlets, all the fundraising emails, every kind of ad space imaginable, etc, etc.
And I know what you might say. “What about Presidential elections? Hillary outspent Donald.” Apples and oranges. CONGRESSIONAL elections aren’t the same as PRESIDENTIAL ones. In Congressional elections, you need good attention. Lots of focus on you in a good, positive light and to tear down your opponent. In a presidential election, the candidates get near-constant attention from the media, so they don’t NEED to spend as much money for good attention, they just need, when the cameras are on them, to say the right things about the right people. But in CONGRESSIONAL elections, the only way to get that kind of constant attention is to always be spending.
Money can’t buy happiness, but it CAN buy bucketloads of airtime, and that airtime means exposure. In a presidential election, it’s easy in a general election to get exposure. Notsomuch in a congressional one, a mayoral one, a special runoff type. Unless you do something REALLY dumb like Anthony Weiner did.
So your insistence on not taking corporate money will just handicap you. It’ll keep you from getting as much focus and attention. Especially when most senators AREN’T Bernie Sanders, they’re not gonna be able to get their constituents to send in twenty bucks a week or a day. We all have deleted loads of emails from the DNC or Obama asking for donations. You think people wanna keep sending in money to their congressman when they could just use that money for gas or groceries?
Now, Hillary HAD a plan for public funding of elections. And it was really damn good. theintercept.com/2015/09/08/hillary-clintons-campaign-finance-reform-plan-genuinely-good/
But none of your “type” heard that. All they screamed through the General was “EMAILS! KILLARY! CORPORATE SHILL! RIGGING! FRACKING!” And by the time they realized they were hurting the only person who could realistically beat Trump…it was too late, and the damage was gone.
How about taking some responsibility, instead of trying to absolve all your side of blame? What did people like ME say? “The only thing that stops Donald Trump is a vote for Hillary. If he gets elected, he will build a wall. He will try to deport Muslims and screw over brown and black people. He’ll put a psycho on the Supreme Court. This is NOT like other years where a more NORMAL Republican possibly being elected might not be so bad because they’re rational and intelligent, Trump is insane and he WILL do all this HOWEVER he can.” What did YOU say? “PSSH! We don’t need to do that! We can’t vote for Hillary! You either ask for a loaf and get half or ask for half a loaf and get crumbs”!
Well GUESS. WHAT. Selfish people like Susan Sarandon or Jimmy Dore, who either didn’t vote or wasted their votes on third party candidates have come to realize that the lesser of two evils really is the LESSER of two evils. The gap between two evils can make all the difference. Now instead of getting half of what you want with Hillary, you’re gonna get FUCKING NOTHING with Donald. Not to mention that the Supreme Court in all likelihood will be lost for over a generation!
So THANKS. FOR. THAT. You wanna whine about Hillary being okay with fracking sometimes? YOU HELPED ELECT MR. FRACK THE PLANET! You wanna whine about Hillary having shady business deals?! LOOK AT WHAT’S GOING ON WITH TRUMP, WHO’S BREAKING THE EMOLUMENTS SECTION OF THE CONSTITUTION EVERY DAY. You wanna whine about Hillary being too close to Wall Street? LOOK WHO TRUMP PUT IN THE WHITE HOUSE! GOLDMAN SACHS CEOS!
And SOME of you out there might think “Then they shouldn’t have chosen Hillary as the candidate”. Not how voting works. Minorites OVERWHELMINGLY voted for Hillary over Bernie. Bernie was trounced among nonwhites, who cast four in 10 votes. The decisive edge for Mrs. Clinton: She won African-Americans by more than 50 percentage points. They went 75% for her over Sanders. She won TWICE the votes of Latinos than Sanders did. By comparison, she BARELY lost to Obama in 08, only by about 70 thousand votes. Sanders lost by MILLIONS. And Obama was a young, charismatic black guy!
Some might say “What about independents!” Sanders lost Democratic Party members by close to 30 percentage points. It’s hard to win the Democratic nomination without winning Democrats. And Independents only account for fewer than one-quarter of voters! FEWER THAN ONE QUARTER. That ain’t enough to win America! There’s only 28 million of them in a country full of 300 million!
Yes, those under age 30 were the fuel behind Mr. Sanders’s campaign. He always had the youth vote. But SENIORS are a larger voting bloc and Mrs. Clinton won more than 70% of them. PLUS Clinton topped Sanders among all income and education levels, and she was particularly strong among those with the highest incomes and college attainment.
So in other words, Bernie got the youth vote, the independent vote…and that was about it. He had no other voting blocs going for him beyond maybe the “uneducated” vote. And for those thinking that perhaps Trump voters would go to him? Well…nope. Chris Hayes also did a forum with Sanders and Trump voters. SOME things they listened to him on and agreed with him, like NAFTA being bad.
Others, well…
CHRIS HAYES: What did you think of it when the senator said, “Free college tuition”?
MARY MAGDALEN MOSER: [To Sanders] That’s the moment I stopped listening to anything coming out of your mouth. Because who is going to pay for it? Why don’t you address how college tuition has skyrocketed 6,000 percent since the 1980s? You can’t have an industry where you have a seniority level where once you’re past a certain level they are unable to fire you. No other industry has that type of protection. That needs to go.
SANDERS: No, I don’t think tenure needs to go. But here is the point: Tuition has gone up a lot — not 6,000 percent, but a lot. … Here is the very simple issue: In the United States of America, do you think all young people, regardless of their income, should get a college education? Or should that only benefit the upper and middle classes?
MOSER: I believe the way the United States works today, where every single human being in the United States has the opportunity to go to college — I do not believe it is a right. I don’t think I should be expected to pay not only for my education and my children’s, but someone else’s as well.
It’s not just “how will we pay for it”. Most people are divided on free college because, guess what, most of America is over 30. They don’t NEED free college.
And free health care?
HAYES: When you hear Sen. Sanders talking about health care as a right, is that the sort of thing you’re interested in?
JAMIE SELENA: That’s great, but how are we going to pay for it? Right now, if you go online and try looking for insurance, it is a massive disaster. You could spend two hours on there, and you have no idea what to look for.
… I’m lucky; I’m quite healthy — and I’m looking at premiums that are $300 to $400 a month, and a $10,000 deductible. That’s ridiculous. How can you afford that?
Thing is, only about half of all Americans…less than half…believe in free college tuition, according to Gallup. http://www.gallup.com/poll/191255/americans-buy-free-pre-split-tuition-free-college.aspx
And polling about single payer and govt intervention in the health care sector is mixed. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/02/people-have-no-idea-what-single-payer-means/471045/
So no. Bernie wouldn’t have won, and your side should stop pushing a false narrative, and own up to the fact that you helped elect Donald Trump. Does Hillary deserve some blame for not campaigning hard enough in certain places? For not putting more people “on the ground” in the right areas?
YES.
But that DOESN’T ABSOLVE YOUR OWN SIDE OF IT’S MISTAKES, CENK. Maybe you should look back at that poll you did of your viewers showing how the vast majority wouldn’t vote for Hillary, and wonder if MAYBE, just MAYBE, you shouldn’t have spent so much time tearing her down over what ended up being mostly bullshit stuff, like the BS Uranium Deal, or the Nothingburger that was the Emails.
