God forbid we struggle for our freedom while suffering for years in poverty.

It is a cartoon illustrating how silly the Bernie or Bust people are.

On the other hand, they will come around. For a moment, I felt that way when Obama was nominated, then fell in line and fell in love.

all those corrupt bankers and war criminals
went to jail.
Oh. Wait.

Suppose Obama had been more militantly progressive from the start. What would this year's campaign have looked like?

My guess is that Clinton would be the nominee anyway, having campaigned on a platform of continuing Obama's policies of sending those people to jail, pressing for Medicare for all, rejecting TPP and other such deals, etc.

If Obama had been more militantly progressive from the start, I think something bad may have happened to him, and he was aware of this.

"I want it NOW" doesn't make it imperative or possible now.

Obama had the same razor to walk that Jackie Robinson did. If Jackie expressed any anger at the way he was treated, or tried to push any sort of consciousness raising about race in America at the time (no matter how deserved or accuate), he would have been bounced out of the league, and there would not have been no other black players for decades.

Obama was called thin skinned, angry and racist for simply being president while black. He has a legacy, for himself and any other person of color coming after him, and was limited in how progressive he could be before people called him a Black Panther.

anyone, even the vaunted Dr. E. Warren would have done anything to the "war criminals and bankers" and NEVER will.

Because who cares right?

This is a place for people who want to enact change within the only party that can enact change. If you don't vote Dem, you're with the republicans.

If a Democrat, like me, finds it (the DNC emails that were entirely no surprise but still appalling ended it for me) unacceptable to cast a vote for a particular Democratic candidate for a particular office, that person is not suddenly a supporter of Republicans.

I have never, once, voted for a Republican in my life. That's 27 years of post-age-18 voting for Democrats in every partisan election, always.

I am absolutely, positively, unequivocally opposed to a Donald Trump presidency. But I am also, finally, absolutely opposed to a Hillary Clinton presidency as well. Nothing to do with Bernie Sanders. I am firmly convinced that the Clintons have profoundly abused the connections that they developed during their time in the White House, and that the Democratic party has become a racket. Either we recover and rehabilitate it, or republican democracy in the United States simply dies.

I've voted for 'lesser of two evils' all my life, but in the current presidential election, the evils are so profound that I regard the only sane course is abstinence from casting a presidential vote.

I may get banned - OK. Moderators - go right ahead if you insist and hide this. Ban me. But if you do, you are also part of the problem, and that's not an ignorant cheap shot - it's the plain truth, as much as any thing may be said to be true.

If the chief accomplishment of the 2016 election is the prevention of a Donald Trump presidency then the Democratic party has made mistakes of the highest order in perverting the 2016 party presidential primary/caucus to serve a single candidate, the candidate's methods of building power, and the candidate's friends. How much lower can it sink? There will be no reform from within when those we grant immense power are, themselves, the very basis of the need for reform. In what universe does this make sense?

I can not imagine voting for a Republican, ever. The Republican party was a racket long before the Democratic party, and it provokes racism, religious bigotry, and deep disdain for the very government that it has been a major part of for around 150 years (if you can get past that, there's not much helping you) in order to motivate its potential voters.

But if Democrats accept that their party is, oh, pretty corrupt and generally controlled by a cabal of insiders, many of whom make handsome careers by obtaining favorable government treatment of their clients, but say 'well, this really isn't the time to deal with that,' then we must hold our citizenship pretty cheaply.

Maybe this will be my final DU post, but your statement is deeply, utterly wrong, and it is so because the present Democratic party is a tool of people who absolutely should not be trusted to govern our country as participants in its (formally, at least) context as a Republic maintained by a representative democratic process.

because you didn't get every little thing you wanted. Wisdom, apparently, is elusive, regardless of age.

You're not being coherent. I'm done here.

What I honestly think you're doing is making this election all about you, your feelings, what you did or did not get.. And what is getting lost here is the fact that Democrats are a WORLD better than Republicans. Climate change, wall street reform, social security, tuition assistance, lgbt rights, renewable energy, tax breaks for the rich, national debt, the "death tax", pro choice, trickle down economics... Jesus Christ man the list is endless. You have forgotten how the country was on the verge of total collapse after 8 years of Bush. But at this point for you, it is no longer about the collective good. It's not about the future, our kids, and the situation we leave them in. No, it's all about you and your feelings. Since when is any of this about your feelings? What separates an adult from a child is the ability to make a decision we maybe aren't fully happy about but that is the best thing for our families and ourselves. Children will make destructive decisions based on emotion. They'll get themselves expelled or grounded even when in the wrong, because it's all about their frustration in the moment, their feelings. They can't step back and say to themselves that regardless of how they feel, the best decision is NOT to punch the girl who they think cut in front of them in line for the slides. The adults who never learn that lesson are the ones charging little league fields going full throttle against refs, destroying the whole game, maybe permanently, for the kids who witness it. They're also the ones who would vote (or not) to ruin our future because they didn't get exactly what they wanted.

It's unbelievable that after 27 years, as you say, of voting for Democrats you can sit there and say that Republicans and Democrats are the same. And the only thing that could cause that is if someone was making this whole thing about them and their feelings, not about the bigger picture, not about what's best for the future. You'd rather let Trump in there to destroy EVERYTHING Bernie ever stood for, rather than get most of it with Hillary. Hell, Bernie could draft a bill next year in Congress and Hillary could sign it. IMAGINE THAT?? But if you'd rather commit political suicide and try to take us with you, go right ahead, but don't come here with your bullshit and expect anyone to agree with you. WAKE UP, AND BE A GROWN UP.

and enjoy screwing ordinary Americans" Trump is the solution to any problems relating to corruption in government.

Bernie has endorsed Hillary. As has Elizabeth Warren, So now Bernie is corrupt as well?

But hey, who cares, right?

and just now agreed to bring into my home for a
Hilary organizer (Ohio) for a month or more.

BUT I will NOT stop agitating for Medicare for all, against the TPP,
and against those thieving for-profit charter schools and banksters.

If you want me to STFU, it is not going to happen.

But right now we need to win, and if more negative shit is coming out of a person's mouth about the Democratic Party than positive shit, it doesn't help us at all.

... but keep fighting for Bernie's revolution.

Nothing wrong with that! We're Democrats, and the revolution was all about the people anyway, not about Bernie himself. Sounds like a good plan to me!



And anyhow, I'd rather keep pushing from the middle than getting shoved to the right and have to push from there. Or, worse: not being allowed to push at all....

===================

that drawing of me?

Thanks you for extending your hospitality to the Hillary organizer. That is extremely gracious of you.

Doesn't seem to get it that the WORST way to win such people over is to browbeat them and insult them.

And I say that as a person who started a thread last night appealing to the holdouts to back the ticket:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12512308737

if Comrade Trump is elected

Those parents had better wake the @#&)#@&)#@&) up, and fast!

(Sarah Silverman at the DNC last night)

In my opinion, HRC made a huge mistake in not choosing Sen. Warren as her running mate; because that would have united the now-divided Democratic Party.

Choosing a conservadem corporatist like Tim Kaine did nothing to attract the 45 percent of Democratic primary voters who voted for Bernie Sanders.

In fact, choosing Kaine was, imo, a "slap in the face" to all Sanders supporters.

Also, putting the divisive DWS into a high position on her campaign staff was, imo, yet another "slap in the face" for those of us who voted for Bernie.

However, as much as I understand your not wanting to vote for Hillary, I hope to God that you change your mind, and that other Democrats who feel the way you do right now will change their minds as well, because just the very THOUGHT of a President Trump sends shivers up & down my spine.

I think Noam Chomsky said recently "I'll hold my nose & vote for Clinton"

I guess I'll do the same.

Why would you assume that people who wanted a more progressive candidate than HRC ONLY did so because of gender? Given that sexists are almost always to the right of non-sexists, how does that even track logically?

The feelings towards the nominee on behalf of the Sanders people who haven't decided to back her yet would be exactly the same if her name had been Henry. It was the issues and it was and is trust.

We've done a fair amount of work addressing the issues. She needs to find the way to address the trust question in her acceptance speech.

you REALLY think there's no sexism on the left? I have news for you - THERE IS A LOT OF SEXISM ON THE LEFT. Heck, there is plenty on display on DU, ALWAYS.

Yes, there are sexists in any part of the spectrum, but that isn't what left opposition to HRC was about.

In any case, there is a need to get past the primary divisions.

Bernie and HRC are now working together.

The prohibitive majority of Sanders supporters are supporting HRC.

Why are you still pouring salt into old wounds?

Your candidate was nominated. A lot of us are trying to get people who should support her to support her.

Give us a chance and give us the benefit of the doubt.

It's in the nominee's interest for you to do so.

YOU ARE

and Hillary was never "my candidate" - she lost my support when she voted for IWR (heck, I was banned from the Hillary Tiger Beat Club almost IMMEDIATELY)

so STOP ASSUMING

we have a job to do now and that is GET HILLARY CLINTON ELECTED

I truly didn't mean to assume.

It's just that there have been thousands of posts on this thread that implied that the reason the male progressives who preferred Bernie to HRC was sexism...that it had nothing to do with the issues, it was about not wanting a woman, ANY woman, too be president.

Of course we are a sexist, racist, homophobic(and classist) country. Of course we have decades of works to change that. I feel confident that the prohibitive majority of people who supported both primary candidates are in full agreement on that.

and a lot of it is because she is a woman

people forget that while Barack was the first African-American president, he was also the 44th male president out of 44

Bernie is the guy who can turn Congress blue. How many friends will you bring to the polls?

We NEED, let me repeat NEED, Elizabeth Warren in the Senate.
The one thing Obama did that truly upset me was he pulled so many moderate to progressive dems from the senate. One reason why we lost our 60 majority is he kept picking away at that number!

I hope president Clinton (II) doesn't do that. Pull from the house sure, but the senate is such a delicate balancing act that I don't think we can afford the loss in progressive legislatures right now.

Besides... We know that Senator Warren will keep our future Madam President in line and call her out on any BS she pulls (lets not forget she is too friendly with the 1%) With Her and Bernie in the senate we can be assured that THIS congress won't be as useless as the ones under that worthless, useless, spineless piece of chit Reid. if he had any power, he never used it.

oh.. right.. who is the VP? he's more forgettable than um... what was I on about?

Do we need EW in the Senate "more" than we need to keep that racist, neo-Nazi Trump out of the White House?

You do know that he is now leading Clinton in the national polls, right?

The Democratic Party is now divided into two groups:
- Those who voted for HRC in the primaries (roughly 55% of Dems)
- Those who voted for Bernie Sanders in the primaries (roughly 45% of Dems)

Hillary Clinton could have made the Democratic Party "whole" again by choosing someone like Sen. Warren..That would have "united" the now-divided Democratic Party

Or, she could have chosen someone much more "liberal" than she is,
(someone other than EW) like Sen. Sherrod Brown, who would have appealed to Sanders supporters and the "progressive wing" of the Democratic Party.

Instead, she chose a Wall Street Conservative, Tim Kaine, who does NOTHING towards "unifying" the Party...

Clinton apparently thinks she can defeat Trump with the backing of a fractured Democratic Party.

Her decision NOT to pick a progressive/populist such as Warren or Sherrod Brown is, imo,
a HUGE mistake.

She will now not have the support of the millions of millenials & others who voted for Bernie..although "some" of them, myself included, will still vote for her.

Many of those millenials & others who voted for Sanders will now vote for either the Green Party or the Libertarian Party candidates, thus ensuring the election of
Donald J. Trump this November.

I'm very disappointed in Secretary Clinton's choice of Tim Kaine as her running mate.

As a 3rd generation Democrat, I'm also very disappointed that she did not choose a
"progressive" like either Warren or Sherrod Brown, which would have "united" the Democratic Party and made it much more difficult for that neo-Nazi Trump to win the election.

It was her choice; and we Democrats now have to live with the consequences of that choice....i.e. the likelihood of her defeat come November, because, in my opinion, a divided Democratic Party will not prevail against Trump...Period!

Are you a Trump supporter?

The terrible logo that The Trump/Pence campaign rolled out and then pulled on the same day because it was so unintentionally pornographic. Lots of people on DU have it in their sig lines.

NOT. Bernie supporter here just replaced lawn art and posters, and got back from downtown handing out fliers. Go, Hillary! (I don't know, seriously why Alaskans ALWAYS call their politicians by their first name. But we do.)

And up here in the reddest of red states? It's actually kind of fun. We talk to people; then they change their votes. It's worked a lot in state/local - why not national!

I don't know why either.

that we're stronger together. Besides, I don't like losing, so I'll just have to work that much harder to convince more voters to participate and cast their ballots for HRC.

Some Sanders' supporters won't change that.

If you know that you could prevent a greater evil - even if it means participating in something that you feel is not morally up to your standards, and you didn't do that, you are participating in that greater evil.

Voters defeat Trump. Bernie is backing Hillary, and if Sanders supporters want to turn on him for that, fine. Revolutions don't involve sitting at home on election day, or voting a 'protest' vote when the stakes have never been higher for our country since the Civil War - and I am not exaggerating.

A vote against a worse candidate is nowhere near complicit as a vote for the other candidate. At least not in my book. Well, at leastthat is what I keep telling myself....

platform left, if only in a token and non-binding way. I'm going to try to be hopeful and be part of the people "helping" the future President and the party remember and enact its liberal obligations, but when I was on the fence, it had nothing to do with Bernie or Bust, or wanting Trump to be President.

If my dilemma had ever been as simple as voting "the lesser of two evils," then yes, it would have been a no brainer, as people want to depict it now, to vote for Clinton. My very real concern was that we were all just playing into a kabuki theater of politics ... a good cop bad cop that continued to result in a nation and planet sliding into the abyss. I still feel very strongly that we owe the Trumps and future Trumps of our nation to the last 30 years of the corporatist wing of the democratic party--the dominant wing--as much as to the wholly owned GOP, because together, they have taken us backwards on so many fronts, a consequence of pro-corporate legislation and being almost entirely mum on issues of campaign finance, small business killing trade deals, Wall Street deregulation, and on and on. I still feel very strongly that this happened in large part because the population has been in equal parts lulled to sleep and convinced to give up on our political system.

Both parties have been content to fight over the symptoms, which as a democrat, amounts to really bad strategy if you want to make the world a better place(and if you want to actually distinguish yourself from the fiscal policies of the GOP in ways that are popular), or really good strategy if divide and conquer is your game and you are working for the same corporate interests. We've avoided class warfare like the plague, which could have been the thing that galvanized the poor and the middle class together, rather than allowing the GOP to divide us with race baiting, wage shaming of public employees, etc.. Together, the parties have eroded the power of labor unions to just a ghost of what they once were. Our schools have gotten worse at the hands of both parties, and an undereducated populace is now freaking out about losing its shirt. Well its no surprise that there are predators waiting there to help them turn their frustrations on each other.

Wouldn't it have been nice if our party hadn't been working for(and weren't one in the same as) the very people that we could have legitimately channeled that righteous rage towards?(btw, not looking for a Bastille Day, people are people, and rich people aren't bad, they just have too much power to advocate their own self interests). Wouldn't it have been nice if we had had a message that wasn't so easily filtered and distorted through the reactionary lens of "if you are fighting for them you are fighting against me," that has been propped up by our corporate media?

I just wasn't so happy about adding my vote to a Clinton "mandate," if what I was going to get for it was messaging from the media and the party that said the voters clearly approve of more corporatism. I would never vote for Trump because there's no way I'm adding my vote to his mandate or popularity, and I think he's a horrible embarrassment, and that his damage to our standing in the world would be a legacy that we would feel for some time. But if my opinion is that we're all sleeping at the wheel while we drive towards a cliff, and that a Trump is going to step on the gas and wake us the fuck up, and if on top of that, my opinion is that this man is so dangerous and unpopular that we might actually get some bipartisan activity in opposing him and shutting down his agenda, not to mention bringing some direct Sunlight to his politics and world-view that they can't possibly survive the disinfectant,

and most importantly, if I am convinced that if we don't drastically change our trajectory as a party and a nation that we are going to get more and more popular demagogues like Trump for the privilege, then I appreciate a more analytical and thoughtful means of persuasion than simplistic memes and shaming techniques. I know that Bernie or Busters, purists, or just cynics like myself, come in all flavors, and there are some that truly were courted from a more right-wing mindset(which is an accomplishment, not a failing of his campaign), and maybe their reasons for never voting for Clinton are weak and unexamined, and that my own process can't be applied to everyone, but I don't think it does any service to unity or mutual understanding to try to paint everybody with a broad brush, nor does it serve to tackle the very serious misgivings that may be keeping some people from coming over.

Edit:

So here are some good reasons to vote for Clinton and push a democratic ticket loudly:

the Presidential ticket usually drives voters. If we have depressed turnout, we may lose even more seats in congress and the Senate.(I don't know what the current seats at risk for taking or losing are at this time) So, even though I never had any intention of not voting down-ticket, an enthusiasm gap could really hurt getting people to the polls. Whether any of these individual democrats are particularly good or bad is probably worth determining on an individual basis, but we know what it looks like when republicans aren't stymied by gridlock. Yeah, I think they're both working for the money, but one side does it a hell of a lot slower than the other does. Democrats have a different base to appease after all, so please god lets not stop sounding like liberals in our own party. Even if Trump has no shot in hell, Hillary could inherit a really conservative congress and senate, and I don't have high hopes for what attempts at compromise are going to look like.

If there is any hope of pushing Hillary left, then she actually needs that mandate to enact left policies. Whether that is going to happen remains to be seen, but assuming the best, the more support she has from an engaged left, the more likely she can and will do something for us.

Supreme Court Justices: Hopefully we don't get appointments like the one Obama just put up, which I guess was a smart political play because he knew that he could make the republicans look ridiculous by turning it down, but I'm hoping for somebody far less conservative on fiscal issues. The question is whether we can get that from Clinton, but we know we can't from Trump.

That's it, belittle Sanders supporters and the mass of people who support his ideals. Put them down, accuse them of acting like Children. That should really help win them over.
NOT!

If you really believe ridiculing people will win them over to your cause, then you are no better than Trump.

And a cautionary tale directed at the likes of people who voted for Nader in 2000.

Nader could have saved us about 6 trillion dollars by asking 600 Florida supporters to vote Gore.

there will be no need to discuss exactly what the actual DNC candidates and policies are?