The Myth of the "Angry" Bernie supporter
In the current political cycle, in which the same youth demographic lauded by Democrats for helping deliver Obama to the WH are now being derided by Baby Boomer Clinton supporters, there is a meme pushed far and wide: Bernie supporters are "mean" and "angry".
Many false equivalencies have been penned comparing
If anyone is 'hijacking' the Left and/or Democratic Party, it is the Clinton resurgence. Keep in mind that many of these establishment politicians in DC who support Hillary now were running AGAINST Obama in the midterms! They didn't want to be associated with him. Yet now that it's politically expedient to hop back on the resurgent Obama train (and his great approval numbers) you see these same turncoat D's playing the political game. Clinton ran a scorched-earth primary against Obama, but now is trying to ride his coattails.
Typical politician crap.
So why the push of the "bernie bro" and 'angry Berner' meme? It's simple: political games. The Bernie campaign has produced large peaceful rallies (unlike Trump) including the Birdie Sanders moment. It literally does not get more Disney than that. Only a campaign as negative as Clinton's would use surrogates and fans to push that kind of smear against Bernie, who has plenty of support from registered Democrats. What Clintonites do is pick out the most strident voices online, provoked or unprovoked, who criticize Clinton and then characterize those voices as representative of all youth or white males or whoever.
First of all, given that Bernie supporters have a much lower mean income than Clinton primary voters, it stands to reason that there's more angry people making under 30k a year than there are making over 60k a year.
In fact, studies have shown that those earning under 60k a year are objectively less happy due to the exponentially higher stress levels associated with not having means to eat well, have good healthcare, no maternal/paternal leave, etc.
So some of the poor people supporting a political revolution in this country are angry at the establishment? No shit, sherlock.
But in the Liberalism For the Upper Classes, By The Upper Classes that Clintonism stands for (neoliberal DLC crap), there is no regard for poor people whether they are conservatives or liberals. They're all the same to Clintonites. I'm a Millennial who's not particularly adamant we make 4-year college 'free' when vocational schools and associate's degrees in focused areas are better for some kids than a off-focus 4-year public school degree. I'd rather invest more in K-12 and vocational training first than trying to treat the symptom, but I recognize BS when Clintonites say we want "free shit". The Iraq war that Clinton voted to put on our nation's credit card, was that ' free '? I don't think it was.
By picking the most strident online voices- some of which may be part of the infamous Clinton astroturf effort- and characterizing them as representative of the millions of Bernie supporters in America is really just representative of the elitist and cynical attitude of the Clinton followers. When Independents make up over 40% of the electorate - a bigger number than both R and D- then whose side are Democrats on when they deny those people a vote in the future of the country? Democrats used to say 'we need to change the two party system' but then abandon that ideal just to support Clinton.Leftists in America said for years we need a system that borrows elements rom Canada/Europe : automatic voter registration or same-day primary registration, open primaries, more than two political parties, proportional allocation instead of bullshit Electoral College, etc. But now you see Clinton fans abandoning any pretense at direct democracy - or democracy at all in NY- just to support their identity politics candidate.
Obama did get votes from black voters based on his race, but he didn't win because he was black. But there is a much stronger element of identity politics in this election, a truth that may not be political correct but in case the elites haven't noticed yet the PC status quo is long gone. Whether you like it or not doesn't change the reality.
Thomas Frank was on Bill Maher this week just laying out the deplorable state of Democrat outreach to lower classes. The D's are now the party of the white-collar liberal voters over 30. That's not a long-term strategy for success. The population sees through the two-party smokescreen, and we know Hillary is a moderate Republican. Clinton knows it is true, and is still willing to cast the Sanders movement as 'radical'.
Anyone who thinks the Sanders campaign is 'radical' should watch the Ruffalo interview of Sanders:
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2016/04/18/sanders-mark-ruffalo-interview/
Sanders is advocating for issues that have wide appeal in the electorate. They are winning political positions, as he has shown in his growth from 1% polling in April 2015 to 50% today nationwide. Clinton will lose her midterms even more handily than Obama did, and a lot of D's in Congress will be forced to dissociate themselves from her.
If the Democrat establishment coronates Clinton, they are doing so with the full knowledge that they will keep losing midterms----and they are perfectly fine with that.
Maybe we do have something to be mad about....
Comments
Rich people are angrier
It has been noted for years that most of the anger in America is actually coming from the rich. I know Paul Krugman is out of favor now due to his pro-Hillary bias, but in 2010 he wrote:
What really ticks off the rich are popular politicians like Bernie Sanders who put the needs of the many ahead of what's good for the 1 Percent. You know the saying, they only call it "class warfare" when WE FIGHT BACK.
If Hillary's wealthy backers think we're angry, I would chalk it up to projection or perhaps even a guilty conscience. The rich know darn well that non-rich Americans have plenty to be angry about, and they are scanning the horizon for pitchforks. Of course, the way politics works in the real world the most oppressed people are too busy trying to survive and helping their loved ones to spend a lot of time on political activism.
"We've done the impossible, and that makes us mighty."
This is essentially what writer Thomas Frank
was trying to say on Bill Maher's show last week. His latest book, "Listen, Liberal" is apparently about his thesis that, when the Republican Party went full-on theoparanoid bircherite insane, all of the moneyed suits found the Democratic Party tailor-made and ripe for takeover. The key to useful rackets ever since.
Now mainstream Democratic sentiment about "the workers" is just expedient vote-bait, and not to be taken seriously after election.
the media keeps harping about the 'takeover' of the GOP
by a 'hostile' Trump.
just look at how the D party has been taken over. What happened to the netroots and ned lamont and fighting the DLC?
i was chatting on twitter with @billmon. i still remember when dailykos was republishing some of his tweets. he and i were discussing the sellout of dailykos on twitter last month, and how it's flipped for corporate Dems.
markos is a think skinned little man who isn't suited to political leadership. he falsely presumed himself as a vocal leader, when it's best he stay in background. his voice is that of a strident, non-credible pro-establishment Dem.
did 9 months in California prison, because Neoliberal Democrats and GOP maggots work together to profit off the drug war
We have all been exposed to the observation that Hillary is so
far to the right that she has become a Reepo. That she has left core Dem principles behind. I am becoming more and more of the mind that this is literally true: Hillary Clinton has triangulated herself out of the Dem Party and has taken "her" voters with her. The Clintons haven't taken the party over, they have abandoned it for the Neoliberal Party, or the Billary Party. Something unlike any version of the Dem party ever seen before. And along the way they have jettisoned the vulnerable, the poor, the disadvantaged. They just don't care about them any more: that is someone else's job. This fits their leading demographic: white women over the age of 45. Their attitude of arrogance and entitlement seeps out over all that they exert power over: the party hacks, the "superdelegates", and especially the MSM. None of them care about people unlike them.
“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” Voltaire
Anyone that mentions Clinton dirt
The Clintons are dirty. If you tell it like it is you're a Bernie Bro (I've wondered are women Bernie Bras?)
They create these false narratives to distract and distort. It is the game they have played for a long time. They are the ones with the hired mud slingers like Brock, hire trolls to destroy Bernie sites, hire spies to invade the Sander campaign and disrupt elections, even phone banking to tell people in Indiana that Bernie has withdrawn from the race. They can't win this without cheating and they are playing every trick they can think of. And that's no myth!
If speaking truth and supporting Bernie makes me a bro (or a bra) so be it!
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
the tactics used by
the tactics used by clintonites to take down bernie FB sites is abhorrent, and reminds me of what george zimmerman fanboys were doing on reddit to censor anti-zimmerman posters.
ironically, the Hillary Bros online astroturf is like its own version of gamergate trolls.
did 9 months in California prison, because Neoliberal Democrats and GOP maggots work together to profit off the drug war
The latest conversion diary OT
has below comments calling Sanders a leftist demagogue. I had to back away. The Hillarians have not taken over the prison there, yet.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
Bill Clinton is looking really bad....
Not far from Howdy Doody in this picture.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
New Democrats and third way policy bullshit.
It's there to keep liberals from winning elections, and if a Republican wins up against a New Dem candidate, oh well. No biggie. As long as it's not a liberal candidate that wins, it's alright.
"The Iron Law of Institutions" describes the Parties to a T
"The people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution "fail" while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to "succeed" if that requires them to lose power within the institution."