Dems Rebuild

[Danny Bateman]

Just now, BigRedBuster said:

 

So does Trump.

 

True.

 

But one of them is president and his impulses and whims affect the entire country. One of them wrote a book. 

[BigRedBuster]

Just now, dudeguyy said:

 

True.

 

But one of them is president and his impulses and whims affect the entire country. One of them wrote a book. 

And I don't want either one involved in American politics anymore.

[Danny Bateman]

1 minute ago, BigRedBuster said:

And I don't want either one involved in American politics anymore.

 

Only one of them is. Clinton has a right to sell books for whoever will buy them or voice her opinion on current events like anybody else. That's just private citizening.

[BigRedBuster]

Just now, dudeguyy said:

 

Only one of them is. Clinton has a right to sell books for whoever will buy them or voice her opinion on current events like anybody else.

Sure she does.  And, anyone has the right to criticize the book and her opinions and what she says.

[Danny Bateman]

57 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

Sure she does.  And, anyone has the right to criticize the book and her opinions and what she says.

 

Right you are. I'm willing to take lumps in this discussion if need be because I feel this is a point worth making. 

 

You're right in that both Clinton and Trump largely do what they want regardless of outside voices. As I said though, I admire the trait in Clinton moreso because the outcomes of her actions are objectively much less consequential, or (had she been elected) less harmful than Trump's. Clinton largely ignores her critics. You could line up an entire room full of experts who want to HELP Trump and he'd thumb his nose at them and do the opposite of what they advised because he doesn't like being told to d.

 

As for her book, from what I have heard, she lays blame fairly thoroughly at her own feet, but also delves extensively into some other factors that played into her loss. I personally don't have a problem with that. The fact that she lost is mostly her own. But is it wrong to say that Russia helped Trump? Is it wrong to posit that the Comey letter may have tipped a W to a L? I don't think it is because I think those things are true. Lots of different things go into a loss, even if it is mostly on Clinton. The Comey letter may have been the difference. I don't think acknowledging these things makes a person some type of apologist who's afraid to criticize Clinton. I'd rather just get a nuanced picture of  the dynamics of the loss rather than just "she's a crappy candidate who ran a crappy campaign and it's 100% on her."

[zoogs]

3 hours ago, RedDenver said:

Hillary's supporters ARE saying Bernie should shut up and sit down. Some lady who's name escapes me just said that on Bill Maher's show last week. Let's not pretend like this is one-sided.

So they'd be wrong, too. Just my take on it. I welcome Bernie-as-a-force and let's see where this takes us. I'm not on board with everything, of course.

[knapplc]

 

 

 

[zoogs]

Valuable reading as we witness the playbook unfold on Elizabeth Warren: 

 

 

Quote

Most of the right’s coverage of Kuhner’s interaction with Warren described her as “frazzled” or “triggered,” claiming that she “scrambles” when confronted. [...] Fake Indian Elizabeth Warren is so easy to frazzle; all one has to do is call her out on her lies and hypocrisy and she loses her cool,” read the Gateway Pundit. [...]

Nor was this the first time that the mainstream press and the right wing have, perhaps unconsciously, mutually fed off of, and fed readers, similar and often gendered messages about Warren. Last year, the New York Times published a story about Warren, describing her as “imperious” and a “scold,” the latter of which would be echoed by Mike Huckabee in a February tweet. MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski described her in 2017 as “shrill” and “almost unhinged,” prefiguring the scrambling, frazzled, freaking-out headlines coming from the right this week.

“The irony is striking,” Jon Keller wrote in the Boston Globe back in February. “The leading female critic of the political Establishment is cast as a somewhat unhinged hypocrite by the right, a meme now being channeled by the left.”

And last week, as a few left-wing pundits, longtime critics of Clinton, weighed in in response to the Times — Chapo Trap House’s Felix Biederman tweeting on the subject of Warren’s meeting with the UBS banker and Dimon, “lol like the one thing she was supposed to be good on”; the politics reporter Libby Watson replying “she’s learning all the right lessons from Clinton 2016 I see” — it was hard not to feel like the marionettes were all playing their parts on the stage in Robert Mercer’s mind, and that it wasn’t just Warren who hadn’t learned any lessons from 2016.

 

[RedDenver]

10 hours ago, zoogs said:

Valuable reading as we witness the playbook unfold on Elizabeth Warren: 

 

 

So is there now any way to criticize Warren without being part of the "bro left"? Her meetings with Wall Street and the bankers are concerning to me.

[zoogs]

If you read the article you'll find it's more nuanced than your protest against it.

[RedDenver]

1 hour ago, zoogs said:

If you read the article you'll find it's more nuanced than your protest against it.

I was responding to the twitter post. I'll read the article in a bit.

[zoogs]

Gotcha. I think the point is there's a gendered way in which we interpret things ... and this propagates through the media, etc. That's not to imply that all women are therefore completely beyond reproach and no criticisms against them are valid.

 

On the lines of the Warren criticism specifically, I do think she has probably the strongest record in this area of anybody in Congress. Unlike Bernie, who has arguably a more prominent brand, Warren has actually accomplished stuff in this arena in her short time as a Senator. Of all the people in the world to suffer credibility attacks in this arena...Warren's inclusion is surprising to me.

[RedDenver]

8 minutes ago, zoogs said:

Gotcha. I think the point is there's a gendered way in which we interpret things ... and this propagates through the media, etc. That's not to imply that all women are therefore completely beyond reproach and no criticisms against them are valid.

 

On the lines of the Warren criticism specifically, I do think she has probably the strongest record in this area of anybody in Congress. Unlike Bernie, who has arguably a more prominent brand, Warren has actually accomplished stuff in this arena in her short time as a Senator. Of all the people in the world to suffer credibility attacks in this arena...Warren's inclusion is surprising to me.

I read the article, and it's reporting on the right-wing direction of attack being from the left is interesting. But the attempt to tie left criticisms back to those right-wing attacks is poorly done and is basically an op-ed with little justification. This quote for example doesn't support that conclusion:

Quote

As recently as January, the Young Turks journalist Jordan Chariton wrote that Warren will have to explain her 2016 choices to the left or continue as “a one-trick pony that steals the show by yelling at bankers during congressional hearings, but isn’t trusted by the movement to do much more.”

Shouldn't any candidate have to explain their choices to the left if they want that vote? In other words, isn't that quote the same regardless of what the right is doing?

[zoogs]

The point is the deployment of this language at Warren, who has done a lot more than "yell at bankers", in a way to create an aura of distrust around her. How did Warren's considerable accomplishments end up being reduced to one-trick pony status,  while Bernie -- who fits the "yells at Wall Street" profile much more accurately without anywhere close to the same Congressional achievements record to his name -- is a cult hero undeserving of suspicion? Isn't it interesting how easy it is to start distrusting perhaps the staunchest advocate we haave in this area? 

 

Especially when you consider the "choices" for which TYT ominously intones she'll have to answer is the failure to endorse Bernie in the middle of primary season. There's a certain culture where failure to throw in for Bernie is going to be viewed as a severe moral failing, and maybe this is spinning off a little bit, but that seems noxious to me. Maybe if Bernie were far more capable, he wouldn't have had that problem.

[RedDenver]

15 minutes ago, zoogs said:

The point is the deployment of this language at Warren, who has done a lot more than "yell at bankers", in a way to create an aura of distrust around her. How did Warren's considerable accomplishments end up being reduced to one-trick pony status,  while Bernie -- who fits the "yells at Wall Street" profile much more accurately without anywhere close to the same Congressional achievements record to his name -- is a cult hero undeserving of suspicion? Isn't it interesting how easy it is to start distrusting perhaps the staunchest advocate we haave in this area? 

 

Especially when you consider the "choices" for which TYT ominously intones she'll have to answer is the failure to endorse Bernie in the middle of primary season. There's a certain culture where failure to throw in for Bernie is going to be viewed as a severe moral failing, and maybe this is spinning off a little bit, but that seems noxious to me. Maybe if Bernie were far more capable, he wouldn't have had that problem.

What are Warrens considerable accomplishments? And why shouldn't Warren have to answer for not endorsing Bernie, at least if she wants to get those voters to vote for her?