5 ms·

Funny how people just get a rough impression of things and then "go with it". Her view of Sanders' 2020 bid was that people like herself were a big part of it-

Funny how people just get a rough impression of things and then "go with it". Her view of Sanders' 2020 bid was that people like herself were a big part of it--even 80 year old Nepalese grandmas were Sanders boosters, after all! I think what really happened is that Democratic insiders, both in the media and the DNC, did their best to sideline his campaign, possibly even with some hanky-panky in the SC and Super Tuesday elections. The "Bernie Bros" narrative is perhaps part of that, but just as a Red Herring. Why did they engage in this evil plot? Not because they dislike Sanders so much, as because he would have been hopeless in the General. I don't know. But if you want to study the question, you can see something happen similar right now with a very different politician, RFK jr. The average impression of the guy is "kook" but he's pretty sensible. (I mean, in terms of issues, he's shit, but that's completely irrelevant.)

AnimalMuppet 3y ago
> The average impression of the guy is "kook" but he's pretty sensible. (I mean, in terms of issues, he's shit, but that's completely irrelevant.) No. Very much no. We're hiring a politician, not a counselor. His policies are the only thing that's relevant.
- 1234letshaveatw 3y ago
  sure, who cares about temperament or character? Anyone who parrots the right talking points is fine
  - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
    Temperament and character matter, I'll give you that. But "talking points" and "policy" are miles apart.
- claytongulick 3y ago
  Take a look at the video he made about his recent trip to the border. The guy seems damn classy to me.
zeroCalories 3y ago
I don't think the author made any crazy claims about Bernie. He did have a diverse coalition that was maligned as Bernie bros. He also didn't have the election stolen in sc or super tuesday, he simply wasn't that popular and could only get wins when 6 moderate candidates were splitting the vote. RFK is an entirely different phenomenon.
- dbingham 3y ago
  > he simply wasn't that popular I think she's reasonably questioning to what degree that lack of popularity was constructed by the media hammering certain narratives (like the Bernie Bros narrative) that were later shown to be mostly false. The point of her article is that narratives in the online world can be generated by a tiny number of people, but can then seem to represent a majority view, come to shape the majority view and create self-fulfilling prophecies.
  - zeroCalories 3y ago
    I was responding to: >...the DNC, did their best to sideline his campaign, possibly even with some hanky-panky in the SC and Super Tuesday elections. The "Bernie Bros" narrative is perhaps part of that, but just as a Red Herring.... I don't disagree that the mainstream media may have hurt him(though I'm not convinced they did). I'm mainly disagreeing that anything bad happened during the primary process with sc and super tuesday.
  - inglor_cz 3y ago
    A tangential "sigh" idea: are we ever going to see an American president younger than 70, or has the age of gerontocracy truly arrived? In a two-party system, massive clout accrues to people who are in the game for the longest time. Offices, lobbyists, donors, name recognition. Prior to the advances of the modern medicine, natural aging would push back against this trend. But now we are seeing ever more old people in positions of power. It is somewhat better in Europe (Sunak and Macron are relatively young, so is Zelensky), but America seems to be very susceptible to that - not just in politics, in business, too (the average age of Fortune 500 CEOs increased a lot since 2000).
pessimizer 3y ago
[flagged]
- llm_nerd 3y ago
  The notion that Bernie is more popular among "both parties and among independents" is fantasy. Sanders is bonafide far left. He is a brilliant person and has wonderful ideas, but he had 0 chance in a general. But I get where the "more popular among both" myth comes from. Loads of right wingers talked him up because they think this is their clever divide and conquer approach, and it is simply amazing that anyone actually falls for. It's the same way the guy above -- a guy who a couple of days ago was commenting on here about the Democratic party deep state in the federal government trying to railroad poor innocent Trump -- talks up RFK Jr. That absolute nutter RFK Jr gets 100% of his airtime by the far right who have made him their current Bernie. He's their Token "Democrat", now that Tulsi Gabbard has gone so far off the far right deep end that she can't play the part anymore.
  - avgcorrection 3y ago
    > The notion that Bernie is more popular among "both parties and among independents" is fantasy. Sanders is bonafide far left. He is a brilliant person and has wonderful ideas, but he had 0 chance in a general. Your assumption seems to be that people's political preferences fall on a single dimension dictated by the Establishment's Overton Window. I see now reason to assume that. Noam Chomsky has gotten standing ovations in places like deeply rural and xenophobic California. Even though he's an anarchist. (Sanders' policy preferences, on the other end, aren't even far left—they're only “far left” because the Overton Window of American politics is far right.) > But I get where the "more popular among both" myth comes from. Loads of right wingers talked him up because they think this is their clever divide and conquer approach, and it is simply amazing that anyone actually falls for. I hate how people denigrate "conspiracy theories". Of course people can conspire: a small group of people with a lot of power can definitely get together in smoke-filled backrooms. But this theory of yours is much more unlikely: a lot of right-wingers seemingly organically cheering on people like Bernie Sanders in order to divide-and-conquer the Left (whatever "the Left" is). That kind of mass astroturfing is much harder to pull off. What's more likely? That many right-wingers simply like Sanders, or that thousands of them got together and decided to, against all of their instincts, fake enthusiasm in public in order to own-the-libs?
avgcorrection 3y ago
> I think what really happened is that Democratic insiders, both in the media and the DNC, did their best to sideline his campaign, possibly even with some hanky-panky in the SC and Super Tuesday elections. The "Bernie Bros" narrative is perhaps part of that, but just as a Red Herring. Why did they engage in this evil plot? Not because they dislike Sanders so much, as because he would have been hopeless in the General. This narrative (not good for the General) is of course their preferred one. But I am not inclined to take them on their word when they chose to smear him with a “red herring” (your words) in the first place. The 2016 election was when people started complaining about Populism, and both Trump and Sanders were populists in rhetoric, although very different in their substance. But the Dems would still have us believe that a non-populist, completely Establishment candidate (Clinton) was what the Dems needed for the General. The more likely explanation is that the Dems would rather lose rather than run with a social democratic candidate.
- SantalBlush 3y ago
  >The more likely explanation is that the Dems would rather lose rather than run with a social democratic candidate. Their behavior does suggest this. It's why they're propping up an octogenarian who is one "senior moment" away from handing the presidency to the other party. "Electability" was a ruse in 2016 and 2020 that they no longer need to keep up.
julianeon 3y ago
RFK has been branded a “kook” because of his anti-vaccine activism and because of outlandish statements like COVID may have been engineered to spare Jews. That’s pretty much the definition of kookiness.

AnimalMuppet 3y ago

> The average impression of the guy is "kook" but he's pretty sensible. (I mean, in terms of issues, he's shit, but that's completely irrelevant.) No. Very much no. We're hiring a politician, not a counselor. His policies are the only thing that's relevant.

1234letshaveatw 3y ago
sure, who cares about temperament or character? Anyone who parrots the right talking points is fine
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  Temperament and character matter, I'll give you that. But "talking points" and "policy" are miles apart.
claytongulick 3y ago
Take a look at the video he made about his recent trip to the border. The guy seems damn classy to me.

zeroCalories 3y ago

I don't think the author made any crazy claims about Bernie. He did have a diverse coalition that was maligned as Bernie bros. He also didn't have the election stolen in sc or super tuesday, he simply wasn't that popular and could only get wins when 6 moderate candidates were splitting the vote. RFK is an entirely different phenomenon.

dbingham 3y ago
> he simply wasn't that popular I think she's reasonably questioning to what degree that lack of popularity was constructed by the media hammering certain narratives (like the Bernie Bros narrative) that were later shown to be mostly false. The point of her article is that narratives in the online world can be generated by a tiny number of people, but can then seem to represent a majority view, come to shape the majority view and create self-fulfilling prophecies.
- zeroCalories 3y ago
  I was responding to: >...the DNC, did their best to sideline his campaign, possibly even with some hanky-panky in the SC and Super Tuesday elections. The "Bernie Bros" narrative is perhaps part of that, but just as a Red Herring.... I don't disagree that the mainstream media may have hurt him(though I'm not convinced they did). I'm mainly disagreeing that anything bad happened during the primary process with sc and super tuesday.
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  A tangential "sigh" idea: are we ever going to see an American president younger than 70, or has the age of gerontocracy truly arrived? In a two-party system, massive clout accrues to people who are in the game for the longest time. Offices, lobbyists, donors, name recognition. Prior to the advances of the modern medicine, natural aging would push back against this trend. But now we are seeing ever more old people in positions of power. It is somewhat better in Europe (Sunak and Macron are relatively young, so is Zelensky), but America seems to be very susceptible to that - not just in politics, in business, too (the average age of Fortune 500 CEOs increased a lot since 2000).

pessimizer 3y ago

[flagged]

llm_nerd 3y ago
The notion that Bernie is more popular among "both parties and among independents" is fantasy. Sanders is bonafide far left. He is a brilliant person and has wonderful ideas, but he had 0 chance in a general. But I get where the "more popular among both" myth comes from. Loads of right wingers talked him up because they think this is their clever divide and conquer approach, and it is simply amazing that anyone actually falls for. It's the same way the guy above -- a guy who a couple of days ago was commenting on here about the Democratic party deep state in the federal government trying to railroad poor innocent Trump -- talks up RFK Jr. That absolute nutter RFK Jr gets 100% of his airtime by the far right who have made him their current Bernie. He's their Token "Democrat", now that Tulsi Gabbard has gone so far off the far right deep end that she can't play the part anymore.
- avgcorrection 3y ago
  > The notion that Bernie is more popular among "both parties and among independents" is fantasy. Sanders is bonafide far left. He is a brilliant person and has wonderful ideas, but he had 0 chance in a general. Your assumption seems to be that people's political preferences fall on a single dimension dictated by the Establishment's Overton Window. I see now reason to assume that. Noam Chomsky has gotten standing ovations in places like deeply rural and xenophobic California. Even though he's an anarchist. (Sanders' policy preferences, on the other end, aren't even far left—they're only “far left” because the Overton Window of American politics is far right.) > But I get where the "more popular among both" myth comes from. Loads of right wingers talked him up because they think this is their clever divide and conquer approach, and it is simply amazing that anyone actually falls for. I hate how people denigrate "conspiracy theories". Of course people can conspire: a small group of people with a lot of power can definitely get together in smoke-filled backrooms. But this theory of yours is much more unlikely: a lot of right-wingers seemingly organically cheering on people like Bernie Sanders in order to divide-and-conquer the Left (whatever "the Left" is). That kind of mass astroturfing is much harder to pull off. What's more likely? That many right-wingers simply like Sanders, or that thousands of them got together and decided to, against all of their instincts, fake enthusiasm in public in order to own-the-libs?

avgcorrection 3y ago

> I think what really happened is that Democratic insiders, both in the media and the DNC, did their best to sideline his campaign, possibly even with some hanky-panky in the SC and Super Tuesday elections. The "Bernie Bros" narrative is perhaps part of that, but just as a Red Herring. Why did they engage in this evil plot? Not because they dislike Sanders so much, as because he would have been hopeless in the General. This narrative (not good for the General) is of course their preferred one. But I am not inclined to take them on their word when they chose to smear him with a “red herring” (your words) in the first place. The 2016 election was when people started complaining about Populism, and both Trump and Sanders were populists in rhetoric, although very different in their substance. But the Dems would still have us believe that a non-populist, completely Establishment candidate (Clinton) was what the Dems needed for the General. The more likely explanation is that the Dems would rather lose rather than run with a social democratic candidate.

SantalBlush 3y ago
>The more likely explanation is that the Dems would rather lose rather than run with a social democratic candidate. Their behavior does suggest this. It's why they're propping up an octogenarian who is one "senior moment" away from handing the presidency to the other party. "Electability" was a ruse in 2016 and 2020 that they no longer need to keep up.

julianeon 3y ago

RFK has been branded a “kook” because of his anti-vaccine activism and because of outlandish statements like COVID may have been engineered to spare Jews. That’s pretty much the definition of kookiness.