Official Bernie Sanders HQ: Not Me, Us!

[Pimpdaddy]

wrong

i srsly hate you

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

Bernie, your moment has come — and gone
David Von Drehle

A certain announcement this week reminded me that for a brief, happy time quite a few years ago, my wife and I rented an apartment in Washington’s grand Kalorama neighborhood. With its high ceilings, wide staircase and gleaming wood floors, our building evoked its origins in the heady days of a brand-new American empire, an emerging global force, an awakening industrial giant. Yet there was a creeping shabbiness to the place that made it affordable for the likes of us.

Think of it as a museum of lost grandeur, populated mostly by Formerly Important People. This small but distinctive slice of the capital’s demography finds its lives of power and purpose whittled to the scale of a pension and gravitates to such buildings. Accustomed to congressional suites or the large offices of undersecretaries, the FIPs require big walls to hold all their photographs of younger selves in historic company. They need ample space to display little gifts received as tokens of gratitude from nations that no longer exist.

In the overheated entry, I occasionally encountered a brusque little man in his 80s at the mailboxes. He had a shock of white hair and the air of a person who expected to be recognized, if only so that he could be annoyed at the intrusion. On perhaps our third encounter, when I glimpsed more than the back of his head, it hit me: Eugene McCarthy. I murmured, “Hello, Senator,” and he grumbled something in return.

Not 30 years earlier, this same man had occupied the electrified heart of a buzzing, sparking madness in U.S. politics. It was 1968. There was a giant in the White House, Lyndon B. Johnson, who found himself there by fate and an electoral landslide. This giant was weakened by the wound of Vietnam — but no one knew how weak, and wounded giants can be dangerous indeed. No one, it seemed, had the guts to test him.

Antiwar strategist Allard K. Lowenstein reportedly begged Sen. Robert F. Kennedy of New York to challenge Johnson. No dice. Lowenstein pleaded next with Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota to do it. Nope.

Eugene McCarthy, a former monk-in-training from Minnesota, said yes.

Shaggy-headed college students clipped their hair, declared themselves “Clean for Gene,” and trooped to New Hampshire to knock on doors. Sometimes, the volunteers interrupted the evening news, which was grim with reports of North Vietnam’s Tet Offensive. When McCarthy won more than 40 percent of the votes in that first primary, and held the giant below 50 percent, suddenly everyone could see that Johnson’s wound was mortal. The president dropped out of the race within weeks. The Democratic Party split wide-open just as the country was going half crazy, and the weird, flawed figure of Richard M. Nixon slipped into the presidency.

All these McCarthy memories came rushing up when Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) announced Tuesday that he’s running for president again. It seems Sanders is making the same mistake McCarthy made as he returned time and again to the presidential well — 1972, 1976, 1988, 1992. Both men were improbable candidates whose willingness to challenge a giant paid off in a transient flash of glory. But Sanders appears no more aware than McCarthy that the moment doesn’t last.

History will not be hoodwinked by the thin excuses Hillary Clinton’s supporters make for her disastrous loss in 2016. Only a terrible candidate could have managed to lose to Donald Trump. For all the headings on her résumé, Clinton had already demonstrated this weakness by losing to an inexperienced Barack Obama in 2008. And yet, as she limped into 2016, only Sanders, among Washington figures, would test her.

Like McCarthy, the Vermont independent tapped something: the anti-giant impulse. Those clean-shaven boys for Gene had their spiritual heirs in the oft-bearded Bernie Bros. McCarthy’s anthem came courtesy of Peter, Paul & Mary. Sanders played Simon and Garfunkel for his soundtrack.

But neither candidate grew into the larger force that can take an impulse and turn it into victory. It is a hard, bitter lesson for most senators and governors and celebrity candidates to learn that history is full of accidents and coincidence and happenstance and contains very few masters of fate.

Sanders filled the anti-Hillary vacuum in 2016. And like the vacuum McCarthy filled in early 1968, this was a fleeting opportunity, seized and then gone. For a moment, it took Sanders to the heart of a buzzing, sparking madness. And much as McCarthy’s moment ended with Nixon, the Sanders moment faded with the weird, flawed figure of Trump in the White House.

However the 2020 campaign might unfold for the Democrats, there is no wounded giant to define the party fray. Minus the vacuum, Sanders will find, like gruff Gene, that his moment is gone, his agenda absorbed by more plausible candidates, his future behind him. Only the residue of unslaked ambition remains.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...ders-is-probably-just-another-one-hit-wonder/

 

[John Reena]

Man, if da DNC runs Kamala/Bernie/Warren Trump DESTROYING em. DNC better do their best to try to get Biden to run OR find sum charismatic young white guy to run.

 

[John Reena]

What u got against spoilers or just posting the link?

 

[Taharqa]

Man, if da DNC runs Kamala/Bernie/Warren Trump DESTROYING em. DNC better do their best to try to get Biden to run OR find sum charismatic young white guy to run.

Biden would get decimated in this climate


all those questionable pictures with women and young girls

 

[storyteller]

Nap's out here sharing already debunked BS that Hillary tried to use against Bernie.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...migration-reform-in-2007-but-its-complicated/ bernie immigration bill 2007

Let's get one thing out of the way: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is no conservative when it comes to immigration, as Hillary Clinton suggested in Wednesday's Democratic debate.

Since coming to the Senate in 2007, Sanders has consistently voted for comprehensive immigration reform and a path to citizenship. But Clinton is right that, in Sanders's first year in the Senate, Congress had the best opportunity it has had in years to pass immigration reform. Clinton voted for the bill, and Sanders voted against it.

To the dismay of many immigration advocates, many Democrats and President George W. Bush, the bill ultimately failed.

On Wednesday, Clinton repeatedly tried to group Sanders in with hard-line Republicans who also voted to kill it.

"You made it clear by your votes, senator, that you were going to stand with Republicans," she said.

Sanders said that Clinton was twisting his vote into something it wasn't. And he's kind of right. Just like the two candidates' back and forth Sunday on whether Sanders supported the auto bailout, there is much more nuance to a senator's vote than one can fit in a sound bite on a debate stage.

So let's go into more detail, shall we? Here's Clinton's and Sanders's ongoing fight over the 2007 immigration reform bill, explained.

It has been described as Washington's last, best chance to overhaul America's immigration laws

After several years of sputtered starts, in 2007, Bush and Sens. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) spotted an opening to get immigration reform through Congress. Democrats had just taken control of the House of Representatives, which meant they controlled both chambers of Congress. All they had to do was override an expected Republican filibuster in the Senate and get the bill to Bush, who would sign it.

An expanding group of lawmakers and their staffs worked for months on a bill that eventually would have created a legal status for an estimated 12 million immigrants in the country illegally and a temporary worker program. It would also strengthen punishment for businesses that hired workers illegally and invest more to secure the border. Taken as a whole, the proposal was the biggest change to immigration laws in two decades.

But the complex bill was, perhaps necessarily, also huge. Like 761 pages huge. And as with many gigantic bills, it became an umbrella for all sorts of lawmakers' concerns and pet projects. Deals were cut, policies watered down or changed, and allegiances called into question. By the end, the bill split Republicans, Democrats, labor unions and immigration activists - sometimes down unpredictable lines.

One division that concerned Sanders happened when it comes to labor. The heavily immigrant Service Employees International Union supported the bill, while the AFL-CIO did not. Some immigration advocacy groups, like the influential League of United Latin American Citizens, expressed concerns as well. Executive director Brent Wilkes said at the time it "will separate families and lead to the exploitation of immigrant workers." (On Wednesday, Sanders cited LULAC's opposition as evidence that voting against the bill did not make him anti-immigration reform.)

Sanders sided with the labor unions concerned about the guest worker program

The program would would have allowed businesses to apply for visas for workers for up to two years at a time.

Today, he likes to talk about his opposition to it in humanitarian terms, calling guest-worker programs semi-slavery. But at the time, Sanders's public comments reflected on the economics of the program - specifically, his concern that bringing in guest workers would drive down wages for low-income Americans. Here's what he said on the Senate floor at the time:

It is not about raising wages or improving benefits. What it is about is bringing into this country over a period of years millions of low-wage temporary workers with the result that wages and benefits in this country, which are already going down, will go down even further.

A top immigration official at AFL-CIO told Politico that Sanders "was basically our ally."

(At Wednesday's debate, Clinton called Sanders's explanation an "excuse" not to vote for the bill.)

The divisions Sanders navigated happened many, many times over, as senators tried to balance their constituency, interest groups and their own personal beliefs about the bill in what was becoming an increasingly messy and personal debate.

Voting day was as chaotic and emotionally fraught, as the months of debate leading up to it had been

Senators were actually voting on a procedural motion to end debate, so that they could vote on the actual bill later. But because of Senate rules and the hype that had built up around it on both sides, the vote quickly became a referendum on immigration reform itself. From The Washington Post's coverage of the day:

A flood of angry phone calls from opponents of the overhaul shut down the Capitol switchboard before the vote, overwhelming the message from a small klatch of immigrant-rights demonstrators urging passage outside the Capitol. Latino lawmakers from the House flooded onto the Senate floor to encourage senators to keep the legislation alive and let the House have a turn.

The vote was expected to be razor-thin. But as soon as two undecided GOP senators voted against it, the whole thing came tumbling down. Supporters fell 14 votes short of the 60 needed to move forward. Fifteen Democrats, 37 Republicans and one independent - Sanders - voted against it.

Bush and the bill's supporters were dejected

"A lot of us worked hard to see if we couldn't find a common ground - it didn't work," the president said.

But then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) described what happened to it best: " I had hoped for a bipartisan accomplishment, and what we got was a bipartisan defeat."

The bill's failure arguably helped harden stances on both sides that has dimmed the chances for immigration reform today.

But immigration reform activists - and Sander - would get another chance in 2013, when the Democratic-controlled Senate passed a reform bill (that didn't get a vote in the House of Representatives). It, too, had a guest-worker program. But this time, most labor groups supported it. And Sanders voted for it.

 

[Pressure]

why don't I hear about Bernie's jewish identity often? Why is that not a plus in a country with anti-semitism? His dad's side of the family was killed in Holocaust. How can some people say they're going for Biden then say Bernie's old and white? Why do some pick and choose when to use identity politics?

He's a white Male. This is a criticism they always seem to avoid. Hence the white male privilege shout out in the quote.

Bernie said on his TYT interview that his VP will be a women and also a progressive.

Identity politics

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

@wire28 @Return to Forever @ezrathegreat @Jello Biafra @humble forever @Darth Nubian @Dameon Farrow @General Bravo III @BigMoneyGrip @VR Tripper @Iceson Beckford [ @BaileyPark31 @Lucky_Lefty @johnedwarduado @Armchair Militant @panopticon

 

[goatmane]

Biden would get decimated in this climate


all those questionable pictures with women and young girls

Trump would just put them pictures up in his rally like Jay did at Summer Jam to Mob deep ballerina pics

 

[goatmane]

This is laughable

Yes, he intentionally boosted Trump while throwing Hillary and the DNC under the bus. He shoulders all responsiblity for his actions and shouldn't be president or on the dem ticket because of it.

The years since Trump won he's done little to nothing to be a check on Trump and Russia's actions. Sanders even openly downplayed Russia's involvement during the election and since even as more and more criminal activity has come to light.

Trump is the worst candidate of all time

Hillary shouldn't have lost period. Losing the Blue Wall requires no excuses

Thats like saying Goalith lost to David because he had a paper cut

 

[the next guy]

This is laughable

Yes, he intentionally boosted Trump while throwing Hillary and the DNC under the bus. He shoulders all responsiblity for his actions and shouldn't be president or on the dem ticket because of it.

The years since Trump won he's done little to nothing to be a check on Trump and Russia's actions. Sanders even openly downplayed Russia's involvement during the election and since even as more and more criminal activity has come to light.

Trump is the worst candidate of all time

Hillary shouldn't have lost period. Losing the Blue Wall requires no excuses

Thats like saying Goalith lost to David because he had a paper cut

She was the worst candidate since Dukakis in 88. All those in midwest wanted nothing to do with her. The Polls during the primary showed she would have had an even bigger loss to Kasich. And before you say it, she won the popular vote, but there are way more people in the US now then 2008 or 2012.

 

[Pressure]

Not a lot of policy talk in this thread.

 

[afterlife2009]

 

[the cac mamba]

The DNC did not fukk him over.

if that's your standards, then that means no one fukked hillary over in the general she lost fair and square.

because the DNC interfered for hillary FAR fukkING MORE than russia interfered for trump