I have fucking HAD IT! Our answer to the bullshit is to stay right on the issues NON STOP.
And Spud over at WayoftheBern hits one out of the park. Thought this was worth sharing:
Just read this embarrassment: https://www.reddit.com/r/WayOfTheBern/comments/5mivzy/hot_bullshit_intel...
You can go there and comment. It's as laughable as it is maddening and embarrassing.
If we bite on that shit, or we start getting sucked into who is who, we will lose this information war big time.
All this week, there has been "concern" expressed here about "us" and our apparent support for that mad carnival barker Trump. There has been concern for us and how "we aren't with Bernie" too.
Like you know, he was with her?
Yeah. Me too.
Bernie hasn't been "with anyone" but labor and the middle class for his entire political life. And while pretty much everyone else is out there either covering their ass, or trying to find a way, somehow, for Clinton to avoid owning her loss, Bernie has been out there on the issues, "rabble rousing" the people, like he has done during the entire campaign.
In fact, his campaign never actually stopped! His campaign for POTUS was the beginning of a political movement --a movement still growing, still in progress, still relevant, and still spot on in terms of the best ideas we have to improve things for the majority of the nation in poverty.
Bernie is educating people and as that sinks in, everyone who gets it has come to realize we have a class fight on our hands. It's been brewing since the impact of Reagan, and got sidelined for a time due to Bill Clinton and the Democrats embracing identity politics.
Divide us up, keep the squabbling. Help the most needy, and most of all, ARGUE THE FUCK OUT OF WHO NEEDS THE MOST, so we don't actually have to get shit done otherwise!
I'm entirely done with that bullshit. Have been for some time, and most of you are there too.
In my view, it's super important to hammer on the issues, and ask questions that get right to those issues, over and over and over.
At the same time, rub the Democratic Party establishment faces in those issues, reminding them of their deplorable performance, and that deplorable performance as the root cause for losing roughly a THOUSAND SEATS over the last 8 years.
Dividing us up, trying to help "the most needy first" has decimated the party, has divided the lower classes into factions all squabbling over little scraps thrown out to fight over, and it has enabled 30 years of regressive, neo-liberal, anti labor, anti-middle class economic policy to take root and be normalized.
I'm sticking right to those ideas. If somehow there are better ones? Fine, I'll get right on that. I've no pride, I've no ego, I've no loyalty even.
Call that a result oriented democracy. Hell, if Trump wants to do free college? I'm all in. How can I help?
We know he won't, but he could.
The most galling thing in all of this to me is that intense focus on blind opposition!
UNIFY AGAINST THE ENEMY!!
Guys, I'm really tired of voting against, as if doing that somehow leaves good behind.
It doesn't. Never has.
And, it's what the right always does. DEFEAT EVIL, and what ever is left is good, right?
Of course not, we know that.
But what happened the moment Trump was President ELECT?
OPPOSE HIM, OPPOSE EVERYTHING! OPPOSE, OPPOSE.
Why, because fuck him, and fuck you guys who didn't fall in line and take the Clinton deal. Also Russians. Because greed.
Jesus, this report really pissed me off. Huge.
People are gonna call us "biased" and you know what?
BET YOUR ASS. Of course we are biased! We are biased in favor of LABOR and THE MIDDLE CLASS.
We are biased away from fucking over our kids, and helping to fuck over our kids kids too.
BIAS IS OK. HAVING A CAUSE IS OK. BEING ABOUT THE IDEAS IS SUPER OK!
In fact, I submit in this time of misinformation, psyops, all out war against people like us, the only thing we have for clarity, to see our way through, to be consistent at all, true to something, is to hold those ideas dear and never, ever let them go.
So that's what I'm doing.
Want a sample?
Say Trump wanted to do Medicare For Everyone, Part E tomorrow. First thing I'll do, is "OF COURSE! HOW CAN I HELP GET THAT DONE?"
Now, our pals in the Dem Party Establishment will OPPOSE EVERYTHING.
Bernie? He will ask questions to make sure it's really Medicare For Everyone and not some way to fuck us, and if it's the real deal, he's gonna get out there and campaign for it.
Our identity politics blind Democratic Party Establishment, "still with her" types?
Gotta get rid of the Hyde Amendment first. Yes some kossack actually said that recently, in response to this exact issue.
Now, nobody wants to throw women under the bus. I don't, but it sure seems to me like we jump on Medicare Part E, and then once we have that shit locked in, we all get insurance, then we go to fight over making it fucking AWESOME, or we figure out another way for all the little exceptions.
Making it as ugly as possible before even having the discussion seems like not letting the ideas guide us, not getting things done, and all that shit.
...all of which tells me that faction of the Democratic Party, in addition to being very seriously addicted to big money, is dickish. Just shitty. Wants to make it personal way more than wants to get shit done, or even consider the ideas being important.
Ideas. I'm with Bernie on those. How do we get 'em done? If we are actually asking that? If we are talking to everybody?
THEY MIGHT ACTUALLY GET DONE, just like we see New York apparently willing to do with the free college!
The man is right about it. Bernie has 40 years experience here. I'm working it his way, staying about the ideas and won't get sucked into the people pissing matches.
Don't have time for that shit. Really don't have time to suffer embarrassments like this completely blatant "Clinton got robbed by Russians" report.
Rant over. For now.
Oh, you guys who wrote the great stuff about Deminvade, long term planning, etc...
Top work. Thank you. You are awesome. I'm a fan. Needed to see that this week.
Comments
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"Polls don't tell us how well a candidate is doing; Polls tell us how well the media is doing." ~ Me
Hi Thumb
Spud did lay that report out and take it apart. I have no idea "why" the stupid democratic party is wasting time on this. People have their number, and this bull shit about Russia just confirms it.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Why? Simple...
The Dem leadership needs to spin this as a Russian conspiracy. In reality (and one of the central points of the rant) is that our current Dem leaders, and their supporters in the mainstream press, have been pushing a narrative that Clinton didn't lose because she was a terrible candidate running a terrible campaign, she lost because Russia interfered (by exposing how the Hillary campaign interfered in the Democratic primary, but they don't actually include that part).
This whole "Russia did it" meme is how they avoid any and all responsibility for losing to Trump, and if they can avoid that discussion they can all keep their leadership positions in the party and go forward as if they did nothing wrong, that they were wronged by a foreign entity, and we should make that the argument rather than what was exposed and how poorly we were all served by Dem leadership.
"Polls don't tell us how well a candidate is doing; Polls tell us how well the media is doing." ~ Me
Donna Brazile retaining her position
in the DNC is prima facie evidence of your point. The beltway consultant class can rest easy and retain their accounts if people believe that Russia did it. 2018 will be ugly, as yet more people defect from the Democratic party. How far down will they have to go before they admit that they have a problem?
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
I am
pro-rant.
Good job.
Progressive to the bone.
Agree . . . very good
excellent rant. I needed that!
And what was this about? Sounds interesting.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
The open thread from the day before
https://www.reddit.com/r/WayOfTheBern/comments/5m8b20/deminvade_what_it_...
"Polls don't tell us how well a candidate is doing; Polls tell us how well the media is doing." ~ Me
I'm sick of it too
We are all individuals, we are not labels. No political label probably comes close to describing who each of us really is, but all political labels presume to and are so exploited. There IS an us and them, and Them are getting Us to fight each other for their benefit. Reducing individuals to political labels is fucking insulting.
Beware the bullshit factories.
Wow, worth a login to upvote.
Ranting is good. Submission is not.
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.
This is cynical liberal bashing, Sanders bashing and "Bernie
Bro" bashing.
The support for Medicare for All arose independently of Sanders run for the Presidency and pre-dates his run by about nine years.
Conyers introduced H.R. 676 (Medicare for All) before was elected. The bill had 100 co-sponsors in the House, roughly, all the members of the House Progressive Caucus, which had about 100 members at the time. I'm guessing most of those people endorsed Hillary. They sure didn't endorse Bernie.
Please don't tell me that Obama, who was a Senator then, got ACA enacted without knowing this. PLEASE don't tell me that. So, his blaming it on Sanders' supporters is, as I said, cynical.
Also, ACA is very vulnerable to criticism. Let Sander supporters attack Social Security and see how many people line up behind them on that one. And, it's Republicans like Limbaugh and Republican politicians attacking Obamacare publicly all the time, on radio and TV. Sanders supporters are not doing that. If he's referring to Sanders supporters on message boards and thinking they're turning the country around on a good program, he's nuts--and I don't think he's nut. So, did I mention cynical?
Righteous rant
This part especially spoke to me:
This was exactly the kind of crap that we ran into here in WA trying to pass a progressive carbon tax. All these "leftists" couldn't get past "it's not perfect for our constituency so we are going to oppose it". Towards the end, a few of them started to realize that they could probably tweak what they didn't like, but by then the damage had already been done.
We may yet get the last laugh, as the governor has suddenly proposed a carbon tax of his own, but I put its chances in the lege as lower than a good initiative campaign. If there is one thing I have learned about the initiative process is that it's the only way to get anything big done. Leges can smooth rough edges but expecting them to do anything visionary is a fools errand. So sabotaging good initiatives is simply anti-progressive, no matter what these people tell themselves in their little kaffeklatches.
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
the murderer said
"if that cop hadn't jaywalked he wouldn't have caught me!" and now Murder Inc. is trying to pass a law making evidence obtained after jaywalking inadmissible.
By the way, and I mention this only because it refers to future tactics: The Democrats "embraced" identity politics in the 70s. It was a major factor in Reagan's rise. (the fact that the first politician to use IP successfully was Nelson Rockefeller should have been a warning sign, but if it was it was ignored) Only after Reagan proved that IP was poison did the Democrats begin using it as a weapon against… uh, us. My suggestion? When trying to devise a strategy, think also of 2 things - how does the strategy expose the evil of the opposition, and can the strategy be twisted and used against us?
On to Biden since 1973
It wasn't even jay-walking,
Now they're saying that Russia "hacked the election" by posting negative articles about Clinton on RT. Speech is now "election hacking" apparently. The Democratic ideal, I suppose, would be that all commentary about their candidates should have to be approved by DWS or someone, before the proles are allowed to read it, lest false narratives and fake news creep in.
At the end of the day, the oligarchs know that they can completely control politics here if both parties are co-opted. The Republicans are a natural for them, but if they own the Dems too, then they win every time.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
That's a great one, Thumb
Thanks for sharing it here.
'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member
Bern, baby, Bern!
"Bernie hasn't been "with anyone" but labor and the middle class for his entire political life... Bernie has been out there on the issues, "rabble rousing" the people, like he has done during the entire campaign.
In fact, his campaign never actually stopped! His campaign for POTUS was the beginning of a political movement --a movement still growing... "
Exactly right. Bernie not just the catalyst, but also the cheerleader of the "movement" he has initiated. Anyone paying attention knew his campaign loss wasn't the end. While HRC Grannies Up in her new role as, um, grandma, occasionaly making speeches to womens groups across the country - #StillWithHer!! #StillWithHer!! - The Bern back out on the trail keeping rabble rouser issues alive. Still feeling the bern!
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
...apparently, the StillWithHers are dreaming of
drafting her to run for Mayor in NYC:
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/01/06/opinion/sunday/rumors-of-hillary-cl...
#ClintonDerangementSyndrome
'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member
Why do I get the feeling that the Democrats who
are urging Hillary to run for Mayor are Chelsea, Bill and Hillary?
This story has the smell of having been planted by them, whether directly or through a surrogate.
The day she and Bill wore mourning colors for her concession speech, I thought, "Uh oh, dear gods, it's not over." Then came the unprecedented publication of the "spontaneous" selfie of her and her neighbor in Chappaqua and I said, "uh huh." Then, I saw a story about her running for Mayor. And then I heard one of her surrogates on TV--on Charlie Rose's show, I think?-- say "Third time's a charm" and I googled for an anti-nausea home remedy.
Does the film Chucky come to mind?
Much as I love Bernie Sanders,
I have to question the efficacy of a Movement without a Party to back it up. It seems to me that Bernie is fighting a war on two fronts at once -- one against the corporate wing of his own party, and the other against an ascendant Republican right wing. It's not a comfortable strategic position to be in.
native
Parties don't matter.
Your "movement" gets big enough - in the tens of millions - you're going to affect the party - Dems - whether they come courting or not.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
Democrats will pretend to have been affected, just as they have
pretended to be affected by Warren's popularity. If they change at all, it will be because of their historic losses in 2010 and 2014 at national, state and local levels and not because Sanders is urging his movement to donate to and vote for the likes of Shaheen and other establishment Democrats. JMO
He is fighting two fronts
at once, because he has to.
dfarrah
I'm so sick of hearing about the Russian "Hack."
By God, you can't railroad a decent person with the truth. And there was nothing released but truth. If Democrats don't want to be tossed into the garbage, I'd advise them to stop acting like trash.
Twain Disciple
Obviously, you don't get the great danger of letting the public
know absolutely true things about a political party and its candidate for President before they vote. Neither do I. In this Through the Glass country, that makes us Putin Lovers and Hillary Haters. (Gee, couldn't anyone think of a word starting with P to follow Putin? Alliteration is so soothing.)