mahiwaga

I'm not really all that mysterious

tags: Bernie Sanders

2015

April

2015 Apr 30

I know people in swing states who supported Ralph Nader during the 2000 election get a lot of crap for allowing the Bush administration to happen, but, really, Al Gore ran a crappy campaign and the SCOTUS overruled the popular vote. Obviously, the people who actually voted for Bush deserve the brunt of the blame for that administration.

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August

2015 Aug 10

Chasing "undecided" voters is a lot like chasing unicorns. But even if they do truly exist, they are such a statiscally vanishingly tiny percentage of the electorate that it's berserk to pursue them.

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December

2015 Dec 16

Shkreli at It Again

Shkreli, the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals who jacked up the price of Daraprim (pyrimethamine), wants to do the same thing to benznidazole, one of two medications known to be effective in treating Chagas disease.

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2016

February

2016 Feb 22

American Populism and White Privilege

Full disclosure: I intend to vote for Bernie Sanders in the California Democratic primary, although it's likely the nomination will be locked down by then and it won't really matter.

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2016 Feb 22

Dolores Huerta and the Nevada Caucuses

I really think that attacking major figures from the Civil Rights Era who support Hillary Clinton will hurt the Sanders camp far more than it hurts the Clinton camp

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2016 Feb 22

John Lewis Clarifies His Response to Bernie Sanders' Civil Rights Record

I am getting the sense that Sanders supporters are grasping at straws to explain the fact that the Sanders camp can't seem to get significant numbers of people of color to vote for him. There is no Clinton machine conspiracy. The message that economic inequality is the root cause of racism just isn't resonating.

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2016 Feb 25

The Problem with Classical Liberalism and Classical Marxism

I already know Sanderistas will argue about whether or not Clinton is sincere about talking about white privilege and institutionalized racism, but I am certain that Sanders trying to fix the problems caused by racism indirectly by only trying to fix the problems caused by income inequality is going to fail hard and may even backfire horribly.¹

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2016 Feb 26

Neoliberalism FTW

AFAICT, people on the radical left of U.S. politics (which is not that far left as far as international politics in industrialized countries is concerned) probably don't feel either candidate is very leftist. Essentially, the choice is still between two neoliberals so the main determiner is going to be name brand recognition and the resignation to the fact that a neoliberal is still better than a fascist or a theocrat.

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March

Campaigning in Massachusetts

In the event of a Clinton vs. Trump general election, there are probably going to be two large groups of voters who will be inclined to stay home: Sanders voters who think Clinton is too much like a Republican and Republicans who think Trump is too much of a fascist. Clinton has the capacity to get those groups to vote for her, but she's not going to do it by feeding the "I'm above the law" narrative.

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In Case of Recession, Break Glass

Maybe I'm being totally paranoid, but I'm worried about an October surprise, specifically, the stock market crashing and the economy collapsing again.

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Blaming the Victims

It's kind of victim-blaming bullshit that people are more angry with people who want to vote their conscience and choose the most progressive candidate than with the assholes who are hell-bent on installing a fascist dictator in the White House.

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It is heartening that The New York Times has decided to separate pledged delegate counts from superdelegate counts.

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2016 Mar 11

Hitler vs. Stalin

It's interesting how Donald Trump calls for the registering and/or deportation of Muslims and Mexicans, the torture and killing of civilians whose family members are suspected of terrorism, more violence against protestors at his rallies and refuses to disavow white supremacist groups supporting him and people are quick to be apologists and say "He's not Hitler!" while Bernie Sanders calls for universal health care, free higher education, and increased regulation of the financial sector and people seem to immediately jump to "He's just like Stalin!"

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2016 Mar 15

Post-hegemonic Foreign Policy

Somewhat tangential to her post, but R makes a good point: what constitutes "progressive" foreign policy?

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2016 Mar 19

Why Bernie Sanders Has a Right to Stay in the Race

Down by more than 300 pledged delegates, the calls to unite around Hillary Clinton and for Bernie Sanders to drop out have been growing louder.

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2016 Mar 21

Democrats Abroad

Sanders gets 9 delegates while Clinton gets 4 delegates in the Democrats Abroad primary.

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2016 Mar 29

Tone Policing at its Most Pathetic

We really have short memories. The idea that somehow the tone and vitriol in the arguments between Clinton and and their respective supporters is horrifically divisive and likely to cost the Democrats defeat in the general election requires totally forgetting the very-thinly-veiled racism of the 2008 Democratic primaries where leading Democratic establishment figures were blowing barely-concealed dog-whistles about Obama.¹

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2016 Mar 29

Bringing Balance to the Force

On one hand, yeah, privileged people with lots of resources can probably survive a Trump presidency (assuming he doesn't declare martial law and line up all his critics against walls, constitutional or not.) It's not going to hurt them as much if Trump and collaborators in Congress and the SCOTUS start dismantling the social welfare safety net, continue weakening civil rights, send soldiers off on futile wars, start destroying the environment at an even faster rate, etc., etc.

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April

I thought "Berniebot" was just a pejorative term for Sanders supporters (akin to "Obamabot" in the 2008 election without the definite racial component.)

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2016 Apr 12

Is Bernie Sanders a Democrat?

Especially from the Clinton camp, there has been much talk about how Sanders isn't really a Democrat.

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2016 Apr 13

Restoring the New Deal

While I totally agree that Clinton is closer to the center than Sanders is, they're still both far to the left of guys like Kasich, Rubio, or Jeb!

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2016 Apr 19

Despite what Republicans say, the Democratic party isn't like the Communist party where you have to declare total party loyalty. It's always been an unruly coalition of special interests since it's inception as the Democratic-Republican party in 1799. Some special interests have bailed, others have joined, but the dynamic has always been the same. It's a big tent. It's within my living memory when politicians who supported segregation and states' rights caucused with politicians who kindled and propelled the Civil Rights Movement and politicians who were instrumental in preserve the welfare state enacted by the New Deal and the Great Society.

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2016 Apr 19

We don't really need to wonder whether the Bernie or Bust sentiment is real. We already saw it in 2010 when the Democratic electorate rolled over and let the Tea Party move in.

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2016 Apr 20

Assuming that existing polls hold (there is a paucity of polls in the remaining primaries—there's only really data for CT, MD, PA, CA, and NJ, and absolutely nothing from all of May) and using the national polling data as a guide for how the states without data will go (538 has Clinton at 49.4% and Sanders at 41.7% nationally which will be wildly inaccurate in a lot of states—a lot of those smaller states will probably go heavily towards Sanders—but it's all we've got) there's no realistic way for Clinton to get 2,383 pledged delegates before the convention (she'll probably have just under 2,000 pledged delegates by the end of the DC primary.)

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May

2016 May 10

Economic Injustice and Systemic Racism

I can't help but feel that reducing every problem to the problem of income inequality is one of the major reasons why Sanders really never made significant in-roads with older PoCs.

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2016 May 18

The caveat is, even if Sanders drops out and dedicates his fundraising efforts to Clinton's campaign, that's probably not enough to placate his most ardent supporters.

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2016 May 31

Comeback vs Come from Behind

Bernie Sanders inspired some pedantry when he said that Golden State had a "comeback" victory.

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June

Political Reality

Unless something catastrophic happens between now and June 7th (like a stock market crash or a banking scandal or a federal indictment or whatever), this is probably how it's going to play out. The more moderate Sanders supporters will resign themselves to voting for Clinton in November and the more radical Sanders supporters will stay home or vote for Jill Stein or Trump or do something else that's totally crazy and counterproductive, and Sanders' personal political future will depend entirely on whether or not he reconciles with the Democratic establishment.

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July

2016 Jul 11

If not revolution, then at least incrementalism.

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2016 Jul 29

Bernie or Busters and Moderate Republicans

It is interesting that there seems to be more venom reserved for Bernie-or-busters compared to moderate Republicans who think Trump is a disaster but can't stand the idea of voting for Clinton. Both these demographics' interests can at least be partially served by voting for Clinton, but for some reason, holding out because you're a Republican is more virtuous than holding out because you're a progressive.

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August

Bernie-or-busters have been posting this quote from HST lately:

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