Saturday, April 2, 2016

Feel Us Bern


The usual front- page anti- Clinton agitprop at the once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle is finding some "Bernie or bust" nitwits in a place where, for Koch's sake, they should know better:
Would Teresa VanDoorn, 44, a homemaker who had become a familiar face at the Sanders office, support Clinton if she became the Democratic presidential nominee?
“No,” VanDoorn said. “Voting for Hillary would be approving of the status quo and establishment — and I don’t approve of that. I would write Bernie’s name in. I consider Hillary equal to the GOP candidates, to be frank.”
First of all, Oh.  My.  God.

The intrepid Republican moles reporters cherry pick interview a few more thumb- sucking Cheeseheads who, after years of reactionary Republican rule in their own state, still apparently can't tell the difference between a Democrat and neo- fascist blowhard Donald "Rump" Trump or a smarmy theocrat like "Tailgunner Ted" Cruz!  Do we believe these are your typical Bernie Sanders supporters?  Let's hope not, although some polling is showing upwards of a third of nominal Sanders supporters wouldn't vote for Clinton if she wins the nomination.  Twenty- five years of unrelenting right- wing attacks on the Clintons have clearly made it into the "thought" process of a not- insignificant number of people calling themselves "progressives."

Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog takes aim at those who don't believe there's a difference between someone like Hillary Clinton and someone like "Tailgunner Ted" Cruz:
... If you seriously believe that politics is divided into "relentlessly progressive" and "not relentlessly progressive," and that all "not relentlessly progressive" governments are alike, you apparently have overlooked the category of reactionary governments, such as GOP-dominated Wisconsin, North Carolina, Kansas, and Georgia.
I understand why a lot of people loathe Hillary Clinton. But she is not going to sign a national right-to-work law or a national 20-week abortion ban. She's not going to put justices on the Supreme Court who'll vote to eviscerate labor law and voting rights. No, she's not a flaming lefty. But she's not Ted Cruz.
Also, Paul Krugman would like to have a word with the Sanders campaign:
... [T]he Sanders campaign needs to stop feeding the right-wing disinformation machine. Engaging in innuendo suggesting, without evidence, that Clinton is corrupt is, at this point, basically campaigning on behalf of the RNC. If Sanders really believes, as he says, that it’s all-important to keep the White House out of Republican hands, he should stop all that – and tell his staff to stop it too.
We've heard nothing comparing to this "Bernie or bust" sentiment from the other side, perhaps as a function of the fact that when you're ahead you don't need to make threats.  We also have to believe that a lot of this talk is in the heat of the campaign, and just like most of the "PUMAs" posturing about Clinton in 2008 eventually returned to the fold, we think the vast majority of Sanders supporters will as well.  To be clear, we would enthusiastically vote for either Sanders or Clinton in the general election.

But, once again and probably not for the last time, we would like to offer this expert opinion on the Democratic candidates from one who should know:

 BONUS:  More reading here and here.