This was officially the closest race in Iowa caucus history.

Looks like Clinton won, but it doesn't matter. It was so insanely close that the headline will be that these two essentially tied. That's huge for Sanders, since his biggest hurdle has always been the perception that he can't compete with Hillary.

The most negative headline I'm seeing about him is Business Insider, and theirs is just a generic "Clinton wins Iowa Caucus" line with a neutral Reuters writeup of the results and a lead photo of a triumphant, fistpumping Bernie.

Xenocide: Perception doesn't matter all that much in this case. Hillary is flush with cash, resources, campaign infrastructure , and delegates. She's in it for the long haul. And even if Bernie could conceivably be seen as remotely plausible, so what? He's still a pretty awful candidate that looks like a deer caught in headlights the microsecond the topic shifts away from income inequality or campaign finance reform.

Are the Iowa Caucuses really that big of a deal anymore anyway? I understand their historical significance and the news and politicians make a big deal out of it but the general public seems to shrug it off, like "eh, it's Iowa.."

They kind of are and aren't is the best I've been able to get.

I can hear your heart melting. Is your heart melting? I hear something melt.

Define "fight".

I know it sounds like I'm quibbling, but when the vast majority of what you want requires Congress to write new laws, and Republicans are very likely to control at least one chamber next year, and all they have to do is not even bring progressive bills to the floor for a vote, and the President has no power to compel them to do so ... well, I'm legitimately wondering what it looks like for a President to "fight".

I think even President Sanders will discover that, since Republicans have every legal right to obstruct, if he wants them to stop obstructing he's going to have to give them something they want, in other words he's going to have to "reason with the unreasonable".

So whose fault is it, then, that Democrats can't just stomp over the Republicans like they weren't even there? Let me throw some numbers at you: 2010 41%, 2014 37%.

Fighting in this sense means "Rhetorically argue in favor of something, and pursue legislative action to achieve those ends." That's exactly what Sanders will do. You correctly state that the Republican Congress will block everything he tries to do as long as they have the power to do so, which will probably last his entire term.

So what?

I already know that the right in this country are a bunch of irredeemable assholes who are more motivated more by tribalism & superstition than by reason. So the fact that they'll act as a roadblock doesn't really enter into my analysis.

> I think even President Sanders will discover that, since Republicans have every legal right to obstruct, if he wants them to stop obstructing he's going to have to give them something they want, in other words he's going to have to "reason with the unreasonable".

I'm pretty sure that Senator Sanders is already aware of this, and if a glimmer of reason appears across the aisle, I strongly suspect he'll seize the moment. But a more likely scenario is that the unreasonable continue to live up to their name, and nothing will be accomplished. *shrug* C'est la vie. That's what happens when half the people in a
country are terrible.

> So whose fault is it, then, that Democrats can't just stomp over the Republicans like they weren't even there? Let me throw some numbers at you: 2010 41%, 2014 37%.

The answer to your question is "The fault lies with the dipshit citizens of this country", but... I'm not seeing what you're getting at, nor do I understand what your numbers are trying to illustrate.

I understand that Sanders will argue in favor of single payer and etc, but that has no direct bearing on anything. So please elaborate on "pursue legislative action to achieve those ends" ... how does that work? What actual tangible actions can he take?

"But a more likely scenario is that the unreasonable continue to live up to their name, and nothing will be accomplished."

So no actual fighting then.

"nor do I understand what your numbers are trying to illustrate."

The point of those numbers is, in the 2010 elections the turnout rate was 41%, with conservatives voting in greater proportion than anyone else, and they took the House. In 2014 the turnout rate was 37%, and again it was conservatives who took advantage of the low turnout to take back the Senate.

With dogshit terrible turnout rates like that, the Left pretty much held the door for Republicans to get into office and block any chance of progressive action these past several years. And unfortunately, that will remain the situation until the Left starts taking elections seriously. Bernie will die of old age before we have a Congress capable of passing his agenda, that's how little it matters whether Bernie wins.

TL:DR

Bort wants you to vote for Hilary.

I'd like someone to explain what Bernie is actually supposed to accomplish.

Mainly, he's supposed to put visions of tumbrels and guillotines dancing in the heads of people who otherwise have zero motivation to compromise on anything.

Bort, completely serious question but did you watch the video? I'm not saying that to be a dick or anything, it's just that he brings up (in more general, rhetorical terms appropriate to the context) exactly what you're talking about himself near the end, just lie he did in the Killer Mike interview and others. You've said that he is making unfulfilled campaign promises whenever there's a comment thread about him but he pretty consistently goes out of his way to be open about not being able to deliver any of this without ongoing grass roots effort to reform the electoral system and fix congress, so I really sincerely don't understand how you get to the "overpromising" conclusion unless you aren't actually watching his speeches all the way through.

Also, how is the declining voter turnout rate you cited an argument AGAINST voting for a candidate who has been at least as effective, if not more effective than 2008 Obama at mobilizing voters on the left?

"So whose fault is it, then, that Democrats can't just stomp over the Republicans like they weren't even there?"

The Founding Fathers, we live in a secular society where your neighbor gets to be a fascist and vote their ideology too. Unless you're suggesting that fifty million American citizens should be politically disenfranchised because you disagree with them? Considering how the majorities in America treat minorities like garbage, constantly, I'd think a secularist would be less likely to endorse a mass disenfranchisement movement.

Because right wing Democrats are about to be seriously disenfranchised, so they should defo retreat to that moral high ground before the primaries.

Also, where the fuck is EvilHomer, why do I have to type this shit... *drinks breakfast*

OZ - you're right, I haven't been watching Bernie's videos. So I just watched the end of this video, the last part where he's making the appeal of all of us working together. Can you point me to where he mentions Congress? This is his argument: that if we all work together with Bernie, we can overcome the moneyed interests that have taken over Congress, without any mention at all of the need to take back Congress. ("Well he implies" NO HE DOESN'T.)

Now I say this even louder than ever: fuck you Bernie Sanders for misleading your supporters. Fuck you for building a cult of personality when you should be telling your supporters to vote without fail to oust Republicans. Fuck you for building up the expectations of your supporters so that they will be disappointed in a year's time whether or not you are in the Oval Office. Fuck you for not being honest about how this actually works. Fuck you for being the demagogue and not the leader.

As long as your neighbor is a white, landowning male anyway.









Sorry, couldn't resist, carry on.

"the moneyed interests that have taken over Congress"

Excuse me, "the moneyed interests that have taken over WASHINGTON". No mention at all of Congress.

"The moneyed interests that have taken over the planet" is more like. If Oxfam can be trusted (debatable on some things but this one is clear cut enough that even if they're off by a factor of 1000 it's still really bad) we're down to 62 people controlling 99% of the global wealth.

Bort, watch some of his other videos, the ones where he's actually discussing specifics instead of making an inspirational speech to a crowd of supporters. He has been very clear about the congress issue. You can find them, I'm not doing your homework for you.

I don't doubt he's mentioned Congress sometimes. But I don't see any mention of it on his campaign Web site, I've heard him plan to overcome Congressional obstruction by summoning hordes of followers to march in the street, and Bernie does a piss poor job of differentiating between Republicans and Democrats, each of whom may take corporate money, but even if Bernie's right that they're all "bought" they're still very very different. So Bernie's messaging on Congress is mixed at best, and I think woefully inadequate for someone who promises so big.

The proof is in the puddingheads: talk to some Bernie supporters, a huge number of them seem to think that electing Bernie just takes care of everything, because he will use the "bully pulpit" to force Congress to do what he wants and single payer is on its way!

> I'd like someone to explain what Bernie is actually supposed to accomplish.

In all reality, I'm expecting Bernie to accomplish the same thing that Hillary would: preventing the Republicans from enacting whatever harebrained plans they dream up. (Spoiler: they'll all involve "Fuck the poor & minorities")

I have 3 main reasons for being excited about a Sanders presidency:
1) I think he's more likely to shift the Overton window to something I consider sane & rational.

2) It will be nice to have someone in the White House who has more-or-less the same political outlook that I do.

3) I want a leader who will try to do the right thing, thus forcing the Republicans to block it. It's one thing to say "The Republicans would block any move to make higher learning more accessible to middle-class & poor Americans", it's another thing to actually see them kill such legislation & have to explain themselves. I'm not convinced that such a scenario would politically help progressives; Americans might very well believe the bullshit "We can't afford it" rationale that Republicans always use. But Sanders has already cogently directly attacked that line of reasoning; giving him a larger platform from which to make his arguments can only be a good thing, IMO.

> Now I say this even louder than ever: fuck you Bernie Sanders for misleading your supporters. Fuck you for building a cult of personality when you should be telling your supporters to vote without fail to oust Republicans. Fuck you for building up the expectations of your supporters so that they will be disappointed in a year's time whether or not you are in the Oval Office. Fuck you for not being honest about how this actually works. Fuck you for being the demagogue and not the leader.

I don't understand what you're angry about, nor do I understand the distinction you're making. (I say that sincerely, not snarkily.) I don't feel that he's misled anybody, although I do have to admit that I haven't paid close attention to the details of this election cycle. What would you have him say? "Things are hopeless, let's give up."? I'm asking that sincerely.

He seems to be offering plausible solutions to many of the problems facing the nation, and he also seems to be taking the position that we'll tackle the political problems (aka the Republicans) as best we can: by mobilizing the people and arguing the issues. That's all you can do, in a democracy. (Well, you can also engage in dirtier tactics like smearing the enemy or peddling lies, but fortunately he seems to avoid that nonsense.)

One thing I forgot to expand on: What distinction are you drawing when you say that he's a demagogue, not a leader?

"I've heard him plan to overcome Congressional obstruction by summoning hordes of followers to march in the street"

what

OZ - I shit you not. Here's Bernie's plan to overcome the Republicans:

---
What do we do? This is what you do. You say to the speaker of the House, "Hey, you don't want to negotiate with me? I think we should make public colleges and universities tuition free. And I think we should pay for a tax on Wall Street speculation."

Now, do I think the Republican speaker of the House will agree with me? No, I don't think so. But I think he'll have to look out the window and see a million young people demonstrating and marching in Washington saying, "You know what? We want to see affordability in college."
---

http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-transcript-oc tober-11-2015-n442476

That's Bernie's plan: mobs that will frighten the Republicans. The only good thing about that plan is how unlikely it is that Bernie will be able to amass a million droogs.

I don't need to tell you how it would sound if Trump suggested a similar plan.

Anaxagoras - I guess what makes me mad is that the solution has been available for years, but nobody wants to do it: vote in every election, even the midterms (ESPECIALLY the midterms), to knock the Republicans out of power. If you want to improve the Democrats, you can do that in primary season.

The Left, instead, has been sitting out the midterms, getting mad that Democrats couldn't do more with ever-dwindling numbers, and have constructed elaborate mythology to justify an "a pox on both their houses" perspective. That's exactly the worst way to go about this. As I like to point out, the public option failed only because there were not enough Democrats in the Senate, not because the Democrats didn't give it their full support; the only sane, un-fucktarded response would have been to vote hard in 2010 to elect more Senators, but the Left sat it out.

Let's say someone you love desperately needs to lose weight; we know the answer there is diet and exercise, plus a visit to the doctor to look for any underlying causes. Except your beloved ham beast refuses to do any of the hard work, because doctors are all quacks, and there's this health guru from Vermont who says that the snake oil he's peddling will make you slim (in combination with buying his video lecture series). That's about how I view Bernie Sanders.

Bort, from the same transcript:

"I hope by a political revolution we will be substantially increasing voter turnout. Democrats do well, Chuck, when a lot of people vote and Republicans lose."

"The bottom line is, unless turnout becomes much higher, we lose. Unless people are organized and politically conscious in a way that does not exist today, we are not going to transform America the way we have to."


So he is calling for increased voter turnout to put more democrats (and presumably left leaning congresspeople in general) in office in order to break the obstructionist tactics used by the current Republican majority to cripple most of Obama's agenda, with active protest being an important but secondary measure. So what you said, but put in more simple, dramatic, TV friendly terms.

Did you not watch/read all of that interview either, or are you just cherrypicking?

If you Google "Bernie Sanders Congress" this is right on the first hit that's hosted on his web site:


"As president, I will be able to accomplish some of these on my own. But others will require agreement of Congress or, in the case of a constitutional amendment, two-thirds of the Congress and three-quarters of the states. We aren’t going to get there just by electing a president who believes in and is committed to restoring our democracy. We’re going to get there by building a movement – a movement with enough power not only to elect a president but to insist that all of our elected representatives return power to the people, a movement that not only identifies the deep corruption of our politics but rejects cynicism and instead insists on solutions, action and accountability."


It's the concluding paragraph, though, so you have to actually read it (or quickly skim, like I did).

https://berniesanders.com/issues/money-in-politics/

Bort, are you a political science professor at DeVry University or something??
How can you be such a high-IQ moron all the dang time?

Do you want to make more money, Bort? Sure, we all do.



CASE FOR BERNIE SANDERS

Or is that ITT Technical Institute? I forget.

Oh, so you can find where Bernie talks about the need to take back Congress, if you use a search engine to look for it. Well shit, with that sort of emphasis, I guess I misjudged him.

And did Bernie or did Bernie not speak of using a mob to overcome Congressional obstruction? He sure did. He may have said sensible things about necessary long term strategies, but he also said some crazy-ass shit about mobs too, and the message he ought to be sending should be less of the crazy, more of the stuff he buries on his site.

And again, this particular campaign speech, you are overly eager to excuse him for not speaking to the need to take back Congress.

ACtually I didn't use a search engine, I followed the link that you yourself provided, and skimmed (skimmed!) one of the pages linked directly from the front page of his campaign site, which also happens to be one of the top Google hits for the most general search term s I could think of that are relevant to our conversation.

And I guess if you want to define a protest march as a mob then that's what he mentioned. Your word, not his. He spent a couple f sentences on it, and about a half dozen paragraphs on increasing voter turnout to shift the political demographic of congress, but I guess that was irrelevant.


Anyway, we've gotten to the point where you're criticizing him for not saying something and then supporting your criticism by linking to transcripts of him saying exactly what you claim he doesn't, so I'm going to have to agree to disagree here and move on to watching cat videos or something.

RIP Poe-news.com!

"So he is calling for increased voter turnout to put more democrats (and presumably left leaning congresspeople in general) in office in order to break the obstructionist tactics used by the current Republican majority to cripple most of Obama's agenda, with active protest being an important but secondary measure. So what you said, but put in more simple, dramatic, TV friendly terms."

Funny thing is how infrequently he actually mentions Congress and leaves it for you (I mean you personally, OZ) to infer that's what he means. In that transcript he also talks about using the bully pulpit (which has never worked -- not even LBJ could get more than 8% of Southern Democrats to back the Civil Rights Act), he faults Obama for negotiating with Republicans as if there is an alternative when they have the power to obstruct, and if he means that his people have to vote in elections past 2016 I don't see him making mention of it. It would be incredibly easy for a person listening to Bernie to not hear an implied "Congress" all the time, almost as if a president armed with supporters and a bully pulpit and smarter brain than Obama is all you need.

It was nice of Bernie to mention Congressional Democrats once in a favorable light in that transcript though, because most of the time he draws little distinction between the Democrats and Republicans, for example here:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/18/politics/bernie-sanders/

Perhaps he feels some small obligation to not trash the Democrats 100% of the time now that he is running as one.

k
I love him more now.

Except Cruz won in Iowa, a scenario that's likely to keep repeating.

The people I know personally who were enthusiastic about Trump just a few short weeks ago have cooled on him.

It's a shame, too, I spent all week fine tuning my Trump conspiracy theory and now he goes and fucks it up.

JHM I said the same thing to my crying ex when we were at a bar the night Bush won over Kerry: "at least this means four more years of good punk rock.." unfortunately that never really happened like it did in the Reagan into Bush Sr. administrations, but there were some pretty cool T-shirts!

I'd take Trump over Cruz any day. If you look past his inflammatory campaign rhetoric at his actual political history, on most issues Trump is almost indistinguishable from Hillary. The worst things Trump has said for the sake of media attention are the baseline for what Cruz actually believes.

It's more that I'm unimpressed with Sanders. He talks a great game but he has no actual plan to achieve his legislative goals. He's still campaigning on single payer even though Green Mountain Single Payer crashed and burned in his home state (cause of death: out of control medical costs). His grand sweeping vision for a better America didn't even involve helping minorities until BLM rushed the stage and forced him to deal with them (though to his credit, he did step up at that point). Bernie does say a lot of things people want to hear all right, but he doesn't tell them what they need to know: he's not going to be able to deliver, and if they want single payer sometime in their lifetimes, they're going to have to learn to take midterms seriously.

I should mention that my ideal presidential candidate would be Barney Frank: the progressive ideals of Sanders, the goal-oriented process-aware nature of LBJ, and the rhetorical skills of a combination Stephen Fry / David Mitchell / Christopher Hitchens mythological creature but tuned for American audiences.

Plan or not (in essence no presidential candidate can plan anything before getting the actual office, present administration as evidence) Sanders at least has ideals I can at least stand behind and would be willing, as a represented citizen, to find a way to help build a workable plan. I can't exactly expect one executive in an office to do that for me. If the guy can't pull it off, does that really make him a liar?

We have never had a Congress capable of passing single payer, and right now Congress is arguably more opposed to it than it has ever been. Sanders might as well tell you that, if you elect him, you'll be able to fly by flapping your arms. (Still aren't airborne? You must be flapping wrong.)

The plan, such as it is, always remains the same: vote for the best Democrat in the primaries, but more importantly, vote Republicans out of office in the general elections. Once Democrats are there in enough numbers, change is possible.

People vote their hope, not their hate. That's why Kerry lost. That's why McCain lost.

Some people will be motivated by hatred for the other party. More people will be motivated by hope.

> People vote their hope, not their hate. That's why Kerry lost. That's why McCain lost.

I don't think that's true at all. Sometimes hope is the better motivator, but sometimes fear is. (Fear is usually a close cousin of hate.) Johnson probably beat Goldwater due to fear. Bush may have beaten Dukakis due to fear. (i.e. the Willie Horton ads)

People don't vote for hate? Ha ha ha

Jesus christ, when it comes to Sanders supporters, everyone is a Binro.

Maybe, the last I heard the DNC announced this morning that the results from 90 of the districs are "missing," whatever that means. And Hillary only had a %0.2 lead.

0.2% I mean. SQL poisoning.

And now the Sanders supporters and anti-Clinton-ites become crazy wingnut conspiracy theorists.

Jesus christ...why don't you all just fucking hand the presidency to Trump now without even bothering with the headache of an election.

No Stanley, we support Sanders because we don't wish to vote for a pro war, neocon, fear mongering DINO.

It's conspiratorial to point out that because (at the time I posted the previous comment) the spread in the popular vote was a fraction of a percentage point and there were more than enough districts whose votes were "missing" (which could mean almost anything - technical issues, recounts, data loss of some kind - there was no way to know because the DNC only said they were "missing") it was premature to call a victory one way or the other (in the popular vote)?

For the record, I voted for Clinton in 2008.

I was always waiting for him to start shilling the Dissect-An-Alien set or something. It will be missed.