Democrat and very proud of it. Don't disparage the party which allowed you to run in our primary, it appears a strange way of saying thank you

I have never liked Bernie and never will. The moment he announced that he would primary Hillary, I turned to my husband and said, "this will not go well for Hillary and the dems will lose the election."

just a joke.

There was no incumbent in this race, so it was democratic for the primary to field more than one candidate. The whole idea is to have a choice - to vote for whoever you think will best represent the party's ideals and have the best chance to win. Do you blame all those who who ran in the 2004 Democratic primary for "primarying" John Kerry? Or maybe Obama shouldn't have "primaried" Hillary in 2008?
To blame Bernie because he ran in a primary for the Democratic nomination makes no sense. Hillary won the primary and went on to win the popular vote, and maybe even the general election had there been no Russian interference.

O'Malley would have landed some punches but things would have been very different.

The reality is that Bernie caucused with Democrats and espoused Democratic ideals. Maybe it's time to let go of the petty divisiveness and work together against the true threat?

friends with the person I vote for. I can dislike a candidate but support their positions. It's not a mutually exclusive position. Does he have positions I support? Yes. Do I like him? No. The problem with liking people is that we can end up with people like 45.

I don't want to go back, the election is over. But when Bernie berated Obamacare, Hillary was left in a bad position of having to defend it. The public didn't understand the nuance of Obamacare is a good start, but needs fixing.

Talking out of both sides of his mouth, IMO.

People here can't let it go but try to constantly refight the primaries. I will not get drawn into that. I only posted to defend the right of any candidate to run in the primary. I know who the enemy is and it definitely isn't Bernie.

wow.. were you prescient.

Baseless smears like that are completely unnecessary and cause harm. It divides and weakens our party.

You’re a hero unto our cause...Please stay on track and continue your attack on the hateful “Right Wing”
N oone does it quite like you except perhaps Sen. Warren.

Fascistrumps and we don't need any "elite" buzzword crap thrown at us.. thank you very much, BS.

He should be talking about those "elite" trump MF trying to take down our Democracy.

Message to Sanders: Attack the repugs.

your comment will be removed under the "trashing Democrats" rule, which is odd, since is he an Independent

We’ll I’d be ashamed.

I said I felt that switching to the Democratic party solely to run for president was being an opportunist, and my comment was yanked

are an abuse of the alert and vote "feature." I personally never use it. Hopefully nobody who votes to ban has the temerity to then complain about how they themselves or their camp's messaging alone is targeted by this system.

If you feel you were wrongly targeted, that is what you should do...I have one, but I deserved it...didn't mean it the way it came out but still it was there in black and white.

with no other comments at all and it was hidden.

Clearly, stating a FACT with no editorial comments should be a primer candidate for re-instating.

I also had a bland critique of Clinton's campaign (non-inflammatory) hidden, again it was not re-instated.

I would certainly try. But honestly do we need to say things like this? Bernie is considered a Dem in practice according to TOS... and it doesn't help with unity... as you may know I was a supporter of the 'other' candidate...but I want a Dem victory in 18 and 20. Please help us do this. The best thing we can do is ignore this which is provoked and taken out of context in some cases...and I think the media and the righties want a Dem war ...for ratings (media) and for winning (repugs).

be cause for a hide. But it was not re-instated.

So it may work occasionally.

But my experience is it does not work.

I do not make any comments on this subject anymore...not because I am afraid of a hide, but because I want to put this party back together...going to be hard enough without fighting over someone who was a previous candidate...lets think about who will run in 18 and 20. Let get on the defeat Trump train.

Just wish he had staff to impress on him how needless his gratuitous insults to the Democratic party are.

Oh well.

as we move into the future.

is alerted. It is annoying......

There are only three labels available: Democrat, Republican and Independent (a collection of all others). Democratic Socialists are basically Democrats who go a step farther and say government should work for ALL of the people, not just the wealthy and the corporations.

Sam

Humans are basically are just how they are until they are shown how sharing can benefit everybody (like, say in kindergarten )

The same people are in this very thread trashing him, just like they do every time his name is mentioned. That rule is applied extremely selectively.

are being discussed.

He alone is responsible for the words coming out of his mouth.

as an INDEPENDENT he falls outside of the rule

He wanted to leave the Democratic party, after the convention, and so he did. I don't believe he still gets the right to speak as if he is a member of it.

but don't call him an OPPORTUNIST or someone will TAKE OFFENSE and get your post yanked, even though THAT EXACTLY DESCRIBES AN OPPORTUNIST

And the Democratic party let him in. No way could he have advanced as far as he did if he hadn't been under the party's aegis. But he didn't want to stay. He wanted to go back to being an outsider, and more power to him for that too. But he has to surrender the bennies of membership along with his Dem membership card, in my view.

Anyone with half a brain that took a look at Trump, his background, and his lack of intelligence should have come to the conclusion that he was unfit for the Presidency.

Anyone who voted for him knowing how unfit he was, well, that's pretty deplorable.

that there were quite a few( mostly economically challenged) not haters, who felt Trump would help them..
Clueless, but not haters.

For years. Clueless yes, but if all that hate, in all those directions, is not a deal breaker, it's hard to say they're not haters. Passive hate is still hate.

those hats. At least 1/4th of Americans are simply just fucking idiots 2 degrees from being brain dead anyways. It's what brought us reality t.v., and through that, Trump.

Even the hats were the embodiment of racism. They knew what it was, and while I can't argue against the idiocy, or the role "idiot tv" played, still can't deny the outright racism.

He's being diplomatic, in a way that Clinton was (momentarily) not being when she made that gaffe.

I can't say that either position is superior. Many or most of them are pretty deplorable in at least some ways.

I have many Bernie supporter friends, and he's starting to turn some of THEM off with his rhetoric about the deplorable comment, and with other Democratic party comments.

If Hillary hadn't have won the Dem nomination and he had won, I'd have rather have Bernie as president even in an incapacitated state over the piece of disgusting filth we have installed into the White House courtesy putin/GOP shenanigans. But Bernie's rhetoric's now beginning to become stale and off-putting to me.

I grew up in a one bedroom house until I was in 6th grade (mom slept on the couch or the end of my bed)...then we moved into low income housing. We were on medicaid...paid for tubes in my ears (I was losing my hearing), braces on my teeth (they were so tight they thought they'd fall out when I was around 35), and paid for glasses so we all could see. We received food stamps and free lunches. Now, my husband is an officer in the army, so financially, we're good, but I do remember where I come from....and there was no elitist in that story.


I'm tired of being call a "liberal elitist" because I think we can lift everyone up, and not just white people...which I am. This is just wrong.

I will refer you to Phil Ochs over at You Tube, the song is "Love Me, I'm a Liberal." It skewers the breed nicely but contains a word that the SJWs will hide this post over, so I can't post it here.

But yeah, he's worn out the "deplorables" comment. It's time to retire that one. Yes, she was wrong about the percentage, but the ones she was right about deserved the word. And worse.

Perez and Ellison are now working together, draining our swamp and clearing out our deadwood. It's time for the rest of the party to let go of the "Bernie Bro" and "Queen Hillary" garbage and realize we've got a lot more in common than we disagree on.

Sanders and Warren can both help us work toward a new party consensus, something sadly overdue after decades of the Koch funded DLC trying to run things, a consensus that would welcome Democratic Socialists and their ideas rather than snarking at "the left" as having nothing worthwhile to say. Maybe Sanders could join permanently.

Conservatives, at their best, put on the brakes and keep left-liberals from giving away the store. We need them, too, and that should be recognized within the party. The most conservative Democrat in office is twice as progressive as the most liberal Republican. Check it out at Progressive Punch.

It's time to bury the hatchets and rebuild our party the way it's supposed to be, from the roots up. We do that, we can stop losing districts and governor seats. And that is the way toward fixing all the damage to our country that has been done since 1969.

and raise hell on websites about words they don't approve of.

While a lot of them deserve to fall into disuse, they push for outright censorship. And they've gotten it from time to time.

The video uses one that has certainly dropped out of my own lexicon but wasn't considered all that bad in 1964.

who spent their time trolling left wing sites over WORDS they didn't like.

And not in a good way. It's right up there with "snowflakes" and "Democrat Party" (sic), etc.

I can't see censoring ourselves just because some idiot out there uses words inappropriately. You know, like "socialist" and "liberal," both also used extensively by the far right.

Language police who advocate censorship are of the same order as the "alt right." I honestly see little difference between them except the level of physical violence.

Nobody's language-policing. Nobody's interested in censoring anything here.

You know full well that the right has their shared vocabulary, which they "throw" like gang signs. To be specific (and I'm NOT talking about you), if I were to read a cluster of posts (anywhere) by any individual that included the use of "Democrat Party," "snowflake," "SJW," "red pill," "feminazi," etc., I could reach a pretty reasonable estimation of their political timber. In spite of those tricky "ands," "ofs," and "ors."

Peace and cheers-

Speaking of terms that shouldn't be misused..

are going to realize they were wrong. Instead of condemnation why is it wrong to try to get the 20% to come to the light. I agree that most are deplorable but we need every soul possible if only 35% dems get out and vote.

has surrounded himself with NeoNazis and colluded with a Russian regime which is filled with NeoNazis.

Seriously, Americans who voted for Trump need to understand who and what they voted for.

And the Media isn't helping because they investigate the Russian connection but are next to mum about the White Supremacists and THAT group is part of the nexus between Trumpland and Putin.

for? What happens to them then? Maybe they come over to the side of those who have a better way. Although most are lost some can be saved .

sigh.

(Great post as well)

But calling Democrats of any stripe names at this moment in time is deplorable in and of itself. We have a common enemy whether we're Blue Dogs or falling off the Left page. The enemy is Trump, Trump, Trump and his Republican enablers.

They were the enemy before the election and they're the existential threat now. When you've cut an artery, you don't worry about plastic surgery. This name calling and divisiveness only serves an ugly Republican agenda.

We either stick together or we hang together. Personally, I'm not in a hanging mood!

With all the info out about how Russia, Wikileaks, their gang hacked, stacked, and relentlessly pushed fake news about Hillary that even your fans swallowed whole, your comment is not only unhelpful but divisive.

Ignoring the GOP's unconstitutional gerrymandering and criminal voter suppression is political malpractice.

party stands up and fights this they may very well lose.

I wish it would stop. The negative effects and the negative results of those words are very obvious. Yet it continues anyway. Why?

So it's not going to be addressed.

We lost across the board, across the country. Russia and Wikileaks didn't have anything to do with our state and local elections.

"Russia and Wikileaks didn't have anything to do with our state and local elections."

How do you know? Some of the things I've read lately tend to contradict that point of view. But none of us really know yet.

Why dismiss that possibility outright just to get a few digs in on the Democratic party?

It's absurd.

Two things here were very different from 4 years ago.
1. The GOP had upped it's game on the local level. More people and more effective ads.
2. The Democrats were lackluster from the top down to the grass roots level. We had fewer volunteers. The GOTV organization was ineffectual and lethargic.

Russia wasn't the problem.

he's wrong and divisive.

and if people are supporting a racist president people can't call it deplorable now?

what the fuck world am I living in?

Look, I can accept that many Americans voted for the dude because they just wanted a "change" but I refuse to ignore the ugliness of Trump and the sort he attracted. When Sanders goes on this damn shtick of smoothing over hate and the fact that many Americans will gladly vote for toxic politics, I have a problem. That doesn't help, hiding the truth don't help. Trump centered his message on whiteness - whiteness and by extension Christian authoritarianism. That is the context for his approach to social issues, Trade and to foreign policy - let's not get it twisted. Millions voted for that BS.

“Evil preaches tolerance until it is dominant, then it tries to silence good.”

― Charles J. Chaput

I don't know what means that anymore.The only candidate for DNC chair* who wanted to tackle power structures in the party that catered to cliquisms and elitisms was Jehmu Greene and she didn't get any big endorsements.

Elitism as an organizational criticism refers to the upper echelon of organizations or groups should or do run things at the detriment or disenfranchisement of less elite members.

On one hand, we want our best and brightest to rise to the top in any group, but when they become insular and self-referring that can become a problem.

With regard to strategies, I believe we need to do both -- appeal to less committed Republican voters and increase the vote of those who typically vote Democratic. I don't you, JHan, has to do both, but we, as a party, have to do both.

Thank you for talking it out.

....without pretending that Trump didn't expose the ugly underbelly of America.

I am a young black woman, I have no interest in reaching out to bigots who scapegoat immigrants.

bigotry, while it has certainly benefited white people in the past and still does in a huge way, is never really actually benefitted the white people at the bottom in a tangible way, and is no longer benefitting the white middle class. It is being used as a wedge to keep us divided, and to exploit them along with the rest of us.

Yes the subtle and not so subtle programming is on full display with Trump in the White House, and he's adding new fucked up lines of code to the disfunction, but ignorance isn't something that people simply cure themselves of. It doesn't work that way. They've learned social lessons that have helped them to survive and "thrive" in their contexts, which comes with the bigotry, and a lot of broken "common sense" that is all too common, and goes unquestioned because of the bubbles these people live in.

The thing that does not penetrate that bubble is telling them they are shitty. That only makes the surface harder to breach, and without helping them to come to the conclusion that their misconceptions about others are wrong...without helping to try to kick-start their empathy for others that they see AS OTHER, they will have a much harder time arriving at a place where they see their current and former assumptions and actions as anathema to the sort of decency and humanity they think they have.

One thing I think Sanders is doing, is getting through that bubble. He's not excusing the bigotry. He's not excusing the hatred. He's assuming the best in people at large, because that gives them something to lose and because even the vilest acts are often justified by bad assumptions and ignorance, but not necessarily pure selfishness. We've got to get in there to cause cognitive dissonance. Otherwise the only thing reaching these people is going to continue to be hate speech and scapegoating and factually devoid mischaracterizations and dehumanizations of immigrants and people of color and homosexuals and liberals, etc.

Everybody who doesn't think we need to do this, must think that the world is changing in the right direction, or that one day we are just going to have the numbers and the white racist "dumb-fucks" are going to be outbred and die off, but this election, and the continued loss of Democratic seats doesn't make that hope very promising, and worse, if we don't do this right going forward, with these white people and with everybody, when the current scapegoats no longer work to divide, there will be new scapegoats that work on a different range of people, and ultimately, they will have vile consequences too, and we will remain divided and screwed.

If it came down to it and I was given a choice to save the whole state of West Virginia or Utah, versus any diverse city, I would choose the city every time. At least from my perspective the need to reach out to these people is not because I value them more, or think that they are more valuable currently to the future of humanity than others, and in-fact quite the opposite, given just how indoctrinated they are and dangerous the politics they continue to support is. But that isn't the quandary we face. We are all in this together whether we decide to fight each other(or fight back, which I totally get) or not.

It seems imperative to me that we get them to see what even their own actual interests are, because they don't know it, but theirs are aligned to ours. The stupid that they've draped themselves in is smothering them, it isn't giving them shit, and for all of our sakes they need to see it. I don't know what principle is worth not using the tools that might be functional to get them to see it, given the stakes.

I am not down with pretense.

call it as I see it, sick of the coddling and double standards.

there are millions who did not vote ( and many who stayed home or were in states where voter suppression affected turn out) I'm most interested in those voters.

I am not down with reaching out to bigots. I am not going to psycho-analyze them either. They are who they are. This is not me dehumanizing them, but stating a fact. Bigots come in all shapes and forms, some are great neighbors to people they like, are loved by their children, family and friends. Humans are complex.

However millions who also felt the pinch of economic anxiety did NOT vote for Trump and rejected his BS.

Let's understand the ugliness at work here: Of course there are soft Trump voters, I know some of these voters personally who now regret voting the way they did ( including my cousin) . However there are also many who ENJOY what is going on right now, even if it hurts them, because Trump is hurting others who they detest. Trump's "blue lies" don't bother them at all, because in their warped view, they at the top of his concerns when he actually doesn't care. They are so selfish, unless they are directly impacted, they don't care if others starve or suffer under this administration. There is no kumbaya moment to be had with these folks until they come to understand that their toxic politics hurts everyone in the process.

that that is what their toxic politics does, all by their own, in their bubble with the propaganda machine in full force, then we are in for a world of disappointment and continued suffering as a consequence of their sustained and amazingly deepening, ignorance...on the level of less informed than uninformed. It isn't about coddling for the sake of coddling. It is about doing the work in a way that is effective, because again, they are screwing us all. We can try to get them to stop doing it WITHOUT abandoning any of our ideals...without using the tactics wishy washy red-state politicians who think it is better to pander to their constituents with those very same broken values, rather than to present a better, more factual, truthful narrative.

Again, it is not about their suffering and trying to privilege it. It is about the suffering they are meting upon the rest of us, particularly on those of us who are among maligned and hate-targeted populations. Getting them to just see their own damn self-interest and where it does not lie, and getting them to see that they are being taken for a ride, is good for all of us. We continue to lose by not effectively breaking through that wall. Writing them off is hoping for something I don't know that we can count on.

But of course, the voters who stayed home may be more reachable, but that doesn't mean the Sanders messaging doesn't reach some of them as well, and the voter suppression and purging and gerrymandering is anti-democratic to the core, and it is destroying our democracy, but we need these people to see that and to want our side to win so that we have the support of stopping that destruction of our society. We can't do it if we have to rely on a little over half the population and a Government that was installed by the very virtue of those discriminating and cheating policies.

For my part, I don't believe anybody is simply what they are. My admittedly basic understanding of psychology and human development suggests otherwise. Some are rooted in racism to the core, absolutely. It is their identity. It is how they derive their own value. They aren't likely to be reachable, even if we reach their friends and loved-ones. But hopefully that percentage is smaller than it appears on the surface.

You are right, we've had this conversation before. My own thinking on it continues to evolve, and I think I'm speaking about it at least somewhat differently than I have in the past, as my own understanding changes. On the other hand, it may sound to you like exactly the same noise.

The Trump supporters I know IRL and the internet for the most part are not open minded people.

I know that we have to appeal to some moderate gop voters but the bigots will never abandon Trump and we don't want them.

As a gay man I find it difficult to appeal to people who think I am an abomination and consider me a second class citizen, nor should I be expected to.

Sarandon springs immediately to mind......nevermind that she is as deplorable as they come

Mahalo, Me.!

that a person gets wealth solely on his or her own, Hillary Clinton certainly did not make statements remotely close to what you claimed, neither did other Democrats that ran in 2016. The stuff you described are republican talking points. Democrats believe that people should have the chance to be successful, but that those that are hyper successful in terms of accumulating financial wealth should be honored to contribute to ensuring healthcare for all Americans, safe roads and public transportation, educating the young - because those things make everyone more prosperous, including the already rich.

I'm very careful and avoid using BUT
I find usually its a hook and a put down
Kind of a sly aside
eg I like Bernie BUT ...
Do you really ???
It's hard to believe since it reads
Like a disclaimer

I like using AND
to find a way
to connect

I read that you don't really "love" Bernie
AND you could just say that
BUT ....

A word which joins sentences or thoughts..

By the way, did you read my last paragraph?

There is no reason for anyone to "love" a politician. We agree or disagree with them. Doing both is essential to democracy. If people can't accept that an elected representative is ever wrong, our democracy is in serious trouble.

Thank you. You said what I was thinking, only you said it better.

(I'd give it three thumbs up but I don't have three thumbs.)