All right, everyone, stop freaking out. Bernie Sanders complained of chest pains, was taken to the hospital, had a few stents put in, and now all the babbling twits on social media are clutching their pearls and declaring him too old to be running for president, saying he had a heart attack, and questioning his ability to continue. This is nonsense. Sanders did the right thing, treating a potential problem pre-emptively, as we should all do (if we had good health care).
I experienced the same problem in 2010, and sensibly chose to go to the hospital at the first twinge, and then was diagnosed with a potentially life-threatening condition, and had a procedure to install some stents. I was told to take it easy for a few weeks afterwards, and it didn’t even interfere with me going back to work teaching.
Do the math. That was over 9 years ago, and I haven’t experienced any kind of cardiac episode since. I could have served two terms as president without a hitch! This is the kind of routine treatment everyone ought to be able to get as necessary, and that allows one to go on to live a healthy, productive life for years afterward.
(By the way, I still favor Warren for president, but wouldn’t object at all* if Sanders were in office…and my wife is still feeling the Bern all the way.)
*OK, I lied, it doesn’t matter who gets elected, I’ll find something to complain about.
Modern medicine cannot reverse aging. It’s true that more people are having productive lives past 70, but 78 is way up there. He’ll probably be fine (I hope so) but he’s still a pretty high risk patient by age alone.
I would be happy with Sanders as president, though I too would prefer Warren. It still bugs me that there is no cohort of Democrats in their late 40s or 50s who have a serious shot at running for president. Where are they?
Angioplasty but no stent back in 1996. 23 years ago.
I had a new aortic valve put in along with for bypasses just over a year and a half ago. That’s a more difficult recovery than with stents but they had me open for the valve job anyway. Also here in Victoria B.C. they don’t give stents to diabetics since the survival rate with bypasses is better. Bernie may be a bit older than me but he seems a lot more robust than I am in spite of the success of the surgery. I was lucky that I hadn’t had an infarction before the surgery (or since) having self reported my angina in time.
An interesting (well, to me at least) aspect was being in effect turned off for the procedure, so “I” wasn’t around to witness it, thank goodness. Anyway I suppose “death” will be like that and if so I’m fine with it.
I am afraid, however, that this might be a death knell for his presidential campaign which would be entirely unfair of course, but expect Tttttrump to jump all over it (presuming 45 is still in office).
See also Mick “Jumping Jack” Jagger
Each case is different but in general, what Sanders just had is routine, common, and has good outcomes.
One of my relatives had a quadruple coronary bypass operation in the 1980’s.
They lived another 30 years without any heart problems.
And died in their 90’s of something unrelated to the reengineered heart.
Don’t worry, I’m sure pretty soon the right will be accusing him of elitism because he can afford access to modern medicine.
Why do you still prefer Warren over Sanders? She doesn’t support national rent control, she incorrectly called Medicare for All a “framework” when it is a detailed piece of legislation (and has used vague, noncommittal language around it), voted for Trump’s war budget increases, said she would take big money in the general election, voted for Ben Carson as HUD secretary, her plan only cancels some student debt rather than all of it (like Sanders’ plan does), and lots more I can think of. I could see why you’d take that position earlier before Bernie had released more of his platform positions, but it doesn’t make any sense to me now.
Or, the nutcases will claim he did die and has been replaced by a commie / moolsin / immigrant / reptilian / (insert bogey man, woman, or neuter here) robot or replicant. Funded by Soros. And it has something to do with Benghazi. And the plot is in Clinton’s e-mails…
@9, you forgot that the proof is on the server in the Ukraine, hidden by CrowdStrike.
Or something.
@#8, binaryfission55:
People support Warren over Sanders generally for two reasons:
She’s “a Democrat” whereas Sanders is “not a Democrat”, as though that wasn’t a ringing endorsement at this point. Joe Manchin is “a Democrat”. Joe Lieberman was not only “a Democrat” but was Al Gore’s running mate. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who consistently voted with Republicans to undermine anything Elizabeth Warren tried to do in the last decade and bragged about how the party would ignore its own voters, is “a Democrat”.
Since Elizabeth Warren is a Democrat, and in fact once was a Republican, she’s a lot closer to being an establishment Democrat than Sanders. Both the party establishment and the 1% believe, I think correctly, that they would have much more ease convincing her not to actually do anything than they would with Sanders, who has no hidden loyalties and is not beholden to any big donors. Thus there has been a pretty steady stream of careful, subtle propaganda, and although Democrats think they’re too smart to fall for that, they are not.
“Supporting Elizabeth Warren is knuckling under to a conspiracy” is an interesting take.
Either one qualifies as a “not Trump” in my book, as does Mayor Pete, probably my third choice, for now. We’ll see about Cory Booker and Kristen Gillenbrand.
Hopefully Sanders will be fine, but this does point out the problematic issue of his age and whether or not he could serve four or even eight years as President.
Every single president seems to visibly age about twelve years during their first term of office. It’s just a very stressful job.
I think all three of the frontrunners are too old. However, Warren is the youngest of the three, and women tend to age better than men anyway.
I do like both Mayor Pete and Yang. However, we’ve now seen what happens when someone with no political or government experience gets in power. Washington is a fiendishly complex place, and if you get there with a Change agenda but now idea how anything works, the law of unintended consequences says you’re just as likely to wreck something that works as fix something that’s broken. I wish both of them would run for a governor or senator or representative seat and get some experience under their belts — or maybe a cabinet position under whichever Dem will hopefully be our next president. Then I would be quite happy to vote for one of them.
@#12, abbeycadabra:
The news media has been frequently excising Sanders from all graphics and polling result reports for the last few months. (MSNBC, for example, used a particular picture of Democrats on stage at the debates as an overlay. The original image, which was from their coverage of the debates, had Warren in front of Sanders, somewhat overlapping him, with no further candidates in that direction. They carefully edited Sanders out completely but left Warren in. Multiply that by a few hundred instances, and take note of things like the Washington Post online at one point running 16 anti-Sanders editorials in 16 hours and you might reach the conclusion that the media hates Sanders more than any other candidate.)
And no, you are not immune to propaganda. You demonstrate here exactly what I was talking about: Democrats think they are too smart to be taken in by tricks like that — but time after time, votes are decided not by policy but on name recognition. (Who would ever have voted for Hillary Clinton, the always-pro-war always-pro-1% corporate droid, in the primaries, based on policy? Her policy history was a long list of bad choices that a truly smart person would have avoided — and Joe Biden is pretty much exactly the same.)
And Warren knows all this and is playing along. According to the New York Times, she has been contacting establishment Democrats to tell them they have nothing to worry about if she gets the nomination. Now, frankly? That makes me worry even more than her announcement that she’ll be accepting SuperPAC and corporate funding. To me, this suggests that she wants to pull an Obama: campaign as a progressive during the primaries, and then once she has the nomination and the base “has no choice”, push rightward until there’s no significant difference between her and GWB on questions of foreign and fiscal policy.
I want the Democratic Party shaken up. I want Manchin gone. I want every person who was so stupid and/or amoral that they supported either the Iraq war or the Libya invasion to be pushed so far away from the levers of power that they no longer even get donation mailings. (Actually, I want those people to face war crimes trials, but I’m willing to settle for just never letting them screw really obvious decisions up again.) I want Blue Dog Democrats like PZ’s local idiot to reverse their rhetorical position — instead of constantly enabling Republicans and telling the base “this is the best you can get, if it isn’t me it will be a Republican”, they need somebody to twist their arms until they support the base and tell Republicans “this is the best you can get, if it isn’t me it will be somebody much further to the left”. “Obama’s Third Term”, with the party edging further and further towards the Republicans in order to appease 1% donors, would be a disaster for the country and the planet. No more of that nonsense.
@13, Jonathan Norburg — Gillibrand has been out for over a month.
My mom, at 88, was supposed to get a stent and ended up getting a triple bypass. She passed with flying colors. Her cardiologist said she was the oldest person he had ever worked on, and that she left his other, younger patients in the dust. Mom’s brother had had a bypass at 60. You know how doctors always say that if you eat right and keep fit, you’ll get the big payoff? My mom got 28 years of good health that her brother didn’t have. One of her exercises was walking about a mile on a street with an unrelenting uphill–4 or more times per week. After her bypass, she went back to her walking routine, with as much uphill as before. She never learned to drive. She died at 93, with her mind and body intact. Bernie gets so much exercise (at least of his vocal cords) that I wouldn’t be surprised if (many years from now!) he drops dead while in harness, like my mom did.
I’m part of the 70-year-old/angioplasty/stent club, 11 years ago now. The mere astonishing fact that Sanders has run two Presidential campaigns in 4 years is an astonishing testament to his resilience. Go Bernie! (oh, and go Elizabeth too).
@16 Hush up Bernie Bro. You are crank fighting the last battle.
And yeah, Bernie is too damn old
@20: laurian
Unfortunately, @16 is laying the groundwork for the next election too, if and when Bernie doesn’t win the nomination — i.e. if Bernie loses, it can only be because he was cheated out of the nomination by the establishment.
I would be perfectly happy with a Bernie nomination. My politics are pretty closely aligned to his. But I’m not going to have any patience with the same sort of bullshit the bitter Bernie Bros pulled in 2016 (over Bernie’s objections, if you remember) if he doesn’t win. Frankly, the babbling in @16 is exactly the same type of conspiracy nonsense Trump supporters have been peddling for the last four years, even though he actually won!
@16 “Anyone who disagrees with me has been corrupted by the mainstream media!!!!!!!!!” is also an, ah, ‘interesting’ take.
The way this person constructed the image of the Only One Who Could Disagree was…. instructive. A good primer in how conspiracists think. I am none of the things, and engage in none of the activities, assumed necessary to be the Only One Who Could Disagree.
@16: “And no, you are not immune to propaganda. You demonstrate here exactly what I was talking about: Democrats think they are too smart to be taken in by tricks like that — but time after time, votes are decided not by policy but on name recognition. (Who would ever have voted for Hillary Clinton, the always-pro-war always-pro-1% corporate droid, in the primaries, based on policy?”
And neither are you immune to propaganda I see..
@11: You seem to think the rich would rather have Warren than Sanders. This is not true. See, for instance:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/30/opinion/elizabeth-warren-wealth-tax.html
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-09-27/hiltzik-wall-street-democrats-hate-warren
I think I’m only allowed two links, but a little searching online turns up lots more. In fact a search for “rich people hate elizabeth warren” (no quotes) brings up twice as many hits as “rich people hate bernie sanders” (no quotes). Crude, I know, but the rich really hated the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which as of course you know was Warren’s initiative. Now her proposal for a wealth tax has them soiling their silk undies.
I hope Bernie gets well soon and learns to dance like Jagger; but I also hope he gracefully drops out.
tacitus, #21:
Over his objections … and not actually to the degree that you apparently think.
Here’s an NPR story about it from 2017. Maybe you know of other sources, but this was easy to find with Google. It’s worth reading, but NPR does have an unfortunate habit of making things very muddled. One point which should gradually become clear: only 1/10 of Sanders’ “primary supporters” picked Swamp in the general election — even taken at face value, that’s not a large number and not out of the ordinary. That’s not the story favored by Clinton fans, but I’m not actually interested in whatever the fuck that story is.
We also don’t need to take this at face value, because that would be awfully naive. It’s also clear that some people do pick their “favorites” in the opposing primary, where that option is available. Especially if they’re happy with (in this case) the almost-guaranteed Republican candidate (Swamp), they may try to pick an opponent who they believe is more likely to lose to that candidate in the general election. Such people don’t need to be correct, only to believe this, in order to act accordingly.
So, it’s not easy to determine how many (within this 10% of which you speak) were genuine “Bernie supporters” during the primary who then defected to Swamp, as opposed to genuine Swamp supporters trolling (as they do with everything else) the Democratic primaries, for the betterment of all Swampkind.
The big question: if none of it really amounts to much, despite all of the noise establishment Dems have made (and you regurgitate), then why are you still railing about “Bernie Bros” three years later? Is there anything of value that this is adding to the conversation?
But don’t let me interrupt. You have more of your … hmm, needing a polite term … more of your “received wisdom,” meant to straighten all of us out:
First, some facts. Swamp got 62.9M in the popular vote, Clinton got 65.8M, Libertarians and Greens got a combined 5.9M, and all others including write-ins add up to 1.9M. It was about 136.7M votes in total, while at the time, the total number of eligible voters was about 230.9M. So, Swamp got about 27% of all eligible voters to vote for him and only 46% of those who did actually vote.
Anyway, what was supposed to be the point of your babbling above, which is somehow relevant to some nonsense in #16? What’s exactly the same as what?
I guess you could just ignore the facts above, if you feel like it, but I don’t get what the fuck it has to do with Swamp winning or with his cultists’ theories. But you do sound like you think you made some kind of a point there. I’m also wondering: do conspiracies, with multiple people acting in a coordinated fashion, not happen on your home planet? Or is it only when politicians officially “lose”? Or what? Are they only theorized about, by people you don’t like?
I do not believe “Bernie Bros” were an actual thing, but I do have some family members who were big Sanders supporters as well as some who favored Clinton more enthusiastically than I did.
The only thing that really pissed me off about the 2016 election and the participation of Sanders supporters was that Hillary Clinton was held to higher standards than any previous establishment Democratic candidate (and found wanting by the left because, whaddayaknow, she was an establishment Democratic candidate). I never had anyone explain to me how Hillary Clinton was a worse candidate than John Kerry in 2004 (once you get past “emails!”) and in fact, I was a lot more enthusiastic about her, though I will always like Obama the most.
Yes, it made me sick that she bragged about support from Henry Kissinger, but on domestic policy, she’d be about at the level of Obama, possibly more liberal, and wholly hamstrung by the GOP congress anyway, just like Bernie Sanders would have been.
Yes, the DNC “rigged” the primaries to favor their choice of candidate. Holy fuck, it’s a political party. They get to set the rules for picking their candidate and used to be far less transparent. If the Sanders primary had a plausible way of getting past the “rigging” then Sanders would have been a viable candidate. They did not. Therefore he was not a viable candidate. Sorry. And Clinton was the clear favorite among African Americans and in California among other places. My sister, a feminist with a corporate streak, was an ardent supporter. Clinton had organic support among many normal, liberal Americans. Not everyone was holding their nose and voting.
She would be president now if the party had shown just a little bit of cohesion. Even Bernie Sanders endorsed her in July 2016. He is more sensible than his supporters. But you know, if it’s really just the Republicrat, Demopublican party, then I suppose it doesn’t matter anyway. Clinton would have been just as bad as Trump, maybe worse, right?
Maybe I’ll just go ahead and vote for Trump this time around. That’s what I now say when it comes up. I mean, my support for Hillary Clinton just goes to prove I’m a Republican at heart. You convinced me!
I am so tired of this Bernie Bro BS. It is made up and is used as propaganda by the establishment. There was nothing about any Clinton Sis people even though a smaller percentage of them voted for Obama than Bernie supporters voted for Clinton. But it is an easy and cheap shot, so I expect people will keep using it.
Ok, forget “Bernie Bros” — that was probably the first time I ever typed that phrase in my life, and I didn’t realize how much of a pejorative it is. The point remains that @16’s post is basically setting up for a repeat of the whining from a certain percentage of Bernie supporters (and they did exist) that the establishment cheated their man out of the nomination. It’s all there, laid out in the first paragraph.
I’m an ex-pat. I can’t vote. The main reason I preferred Clinton over Sanders was because I thought she had a better chance of winning, and I still believe Sanders would have likely lost too after Trump and the Republicans had finished with their character assassinations, and by a larger margin.
PUMAs were a thing back in 2008 – women bitter about Clinton’s defeat to Obama. Obama’s win and subsequent re-election and enduring popularity within the Democratic caucus took the wind out of their sails.
I don’t know whether that’s true. You don’t mean right-wing hacks who are attacking her. (She’s certainly gotten tons of heat from them, which is neither here nor there.) Because you’re talking about some nebulous cabal of progressive/left-wing critics of Clinton, yes? Or am I not following this argument so far? Well … is it true? Were hardcore leftists in the 80s and 90s, for example, very meek and mild in their criticisms of establishment Democrats, or were you simply not listening to them?
And are you sure this isn’t just mere exposure (of Clinton) talking, when you do the comparison below? She had after all been part of the national political scene for over two decades. People like that generally are criticized, very much, for over two decades. But one of the basic points here is pretty simple: you’ve been paying attention to some things, not others, so how about the things you weren’t (at least at the time) paying attention to? This won’t go in very interesting places, if the conversation is not so much about the world we live in, as much as it is about whatever you’ve reconstructed out of your memories.
Popular attitudes have changed in many ways over the years. “The standard you walk past is the standard you accept,” no? That simply didn’t come from the time that Kerry ran in 2004. And since I used the quote, was this acceptable or not? Should you have been willing to accept the lower standards of an establishment Democrat back then or not?
Was it the case that not enough were pushing for such things, so you only thought it was okay? (And maybe you’ve at least begun to change your mind, although you still complain … it is after all what “really pissed [you] off,” right?)
Does any of this really have anything to do with Clinton herself, or is it explained well enough by larger cultural changes that I alluded to above? I guess your story is convenient, if you feel like you should be complaining about leftists criticizing Clinton, but it sounds way too simple to be right.
But what are you even saying? Is it “that’s how it is, and that’s okay, don’t criticize it”? Or do you think it’s not okay?
However, she struggled with the abnormal ones.
Not everyone is right. So that doesn’t prove much, does it?
Bernie Bros most definitely exist. Hint: they’re the people protesting the term here with boring, pointless diatribes just like the “TERF is a slur” crowd.
Mostly, I see “Bernie Bros” used as a label for anyone who can’t shut up about the 2016 election. I’ve never heard it suggested that the whiny fanboys actually cost Hillary the election, just that they’re obnoxious fanatics who need to learn how to change the topic and move on.
consciousness razor@29
Let’s say it was cultural changes. This doesn’t make it any better. It’s great to have high standards, and actually I’m excited to see the political motivations of today’s youth in comparison to the 80s when youth were often more conservative than those ten or twenty years older.
But you still need to win an election. If you do not act as a coalition and accept compromise, you lose. It’s not that Hillary Clinton was more “electable” than Sanders. Indeed, Sanders might very well have won if he was on the ballot against Trump. But around 2015 I did not think that things were just suddenly going to get much better for some incomprehensible reason. It was pretty clear that Obama had been playing defense against a GOP congress and had at least stopped some bad things from happening. There was also some reason to hope that things could improve by bolstering a defensive position while the culture shifted.
There was a great deal at stake, notably the Supreme Court. It was not a given that a Democratic president could get anyone on the court. It’s quite possible we’d have an 8 member Supreme Court right now if either Clinton or Sanders were president. That would still be better than what we have now. Of course, Republicans will always try to pass a massive regressive tax cut, and that might have been blocked. This is what a Democratic presidency would have looked like whether it was Clinton or Sanders. Nothing about that was unpredictable.
Instead we had all these people acting like electing Sanders was going to make some big difference, and yes, that made me angry and still does. I did not see the plan. It was pure magical thinking. Suppose he was elected. I think he has integrity and I would have been pleased, but he would have been no more effective than Obama, Clinton, or Democratic Ham Sandwich. Should I be angry? Maybe not. I do know that there was very little that surprised me except that Clinton ultimately lost (which FiveThirtyEight gave at least 25% chance of happening, so it’s not like it surprised me that much.
I just do not comprehend why Democrats fail to understand how collective action works. I mean this is a union principle isn’t it? You don’t act alone, and you also don’t necessarily get what you individually want. It’s also a game theoretic principle. It’s also an authoritarian principle, which is why I guess Republicans are so good at it. But sorry, winning elections is actually useful if you want to accomplish things, and the establishment Democratic party has sucked at it for years. However, leftwing Democrats are also poor at it on a national level.
BTW, the Democratic party also made a terrible mistake by anointing Hillary Clinton ahead of time instead of encouraging a competitive primary. However, given that it had obviously done this (obvious some time in 2015), acting against this decision without an actual plan to win the primary</i<> was simply inviting another loss. Bernie Sanders himself should have known better. I have no idea why he picked that particular year to run as a Democrat.
And you can say my post above is reasoning from hindsight, but I was quite emphatic throughout the 2016 campaign that all I cared about was preventing Republicans from regaining control of the White House. You could say that is “blind partisanship.” Well, like, it’s not “Yippee! My team won.” it’s the actual consequences of having a president and congress working in concert. Imagine hypothetically John Kasich had been elected president in 2016. The consequences might have been much worse than Trump (though Trump is so close to throwing the nation into crisis and possibly toppling the government, I’m not certain, and he does have control of regulatory agencies). But a Kasich presidency would have been a conventional politician working with a favorable Senate and also “reaching across the aisle” to gullible Democrats who are just sure that this time finally their opponents will play fair.
So the key principle was not to get a person in the White House but something like a rubber stopper that at the very least would stymie Republican efforts to overturn ACA, roll back environmental and safety protections, push us towards insolvency without any public benefit by cutting taxes on the very wealthy, and of course stack the courts with conservatives. I said at the time that I could build an Arduino robot that could be president. It would just have a veto stamp and apply it to whatever shit came out of the Republican congress.
I have no idea what kind of crack people were smoking with on the one hand, big plans for reforms that could not possibly be enacted, and on the other hand a great deal of willingness to buy into a smear campaign against the Democratic candidate that had been going on for about 25 years at a cost of probably over a billion dollars.
I like Sanders. I have family members (particularly nieces and nephews but some inlaws too) who supported him. I was so-so on Clinton (but also have family members who liked her a lot). I am just angry about losing, and it’s not “my team lost the big game.” It’s that it was a critical election and people who should know better lost sight of what was actually at stake.
To be clear, I’m claiming that’s a significant part of the story, to the extent you were pointing at any real-world phenomena that I recognize (not just false claims, bullshit, propaganda, delusions, etc.).
I’m not saying it’s the whole thing.
It better explains the facts, which was the point. I didn’t guarantee that you’d feel happier or whatever. If understanding things makes you feel that way, that’s okay though. Check with your doctor if symptoms persist for more than 24 hours.
There’s a “but” coming. You don’t have to bullshit me, alright? However excited you are about the youth, no matter how much you think it’s what I want to hear, it doesn’t matter. So I don’t care. Because of the “but.”
I don’t need to win any elections.
So I guess I’ll just ignore it, since you vaporized that point. Saves me lots of trouble. (Or does it? We’ll get back to that.)
You’re going to spend a while saying why (at the time) you preferred Clinton to Sanders, which is not the issue…. I’m going to disregard all of that, unless you think I missed something important.
So you’re just falling back to “electability” now? You know Clinton is an establishment Democrat — has been for years! I’m sure you know that. So…. okay, that explains nothing, but I will take it and treasure it.
Have you considered electing more leftwing Democrats, instead of fewer leftwing Democrats? I mean, in a democracy, we are the ones who give them those jobs. And you were expressing your excitement above, of course — if that’s sincere, then more leftwing Dems would be a coherent choice for you. If I can’t appeal to your sincerity and/or coherence, then I don’t know what to say, other than “stop bullshitting.”
So, here’s the idea. You could decide that you (or we) were “poor” at choosing them, so we should do a better job of that in the future. That puts the responsibility back into our hands, where it belongs. That approach also seems more useful than reading tea leaves (or whatever your proposal actually is), if you think we should try to do something about it. Because then it’s very clear what we can and should do.
Or if you’re actually like many moderate establishment types, you might think we (or just you) shouldn’t have to do much of anything. Because they’re pretty satisfied with this state of affairs, all things considered, although they do find plenty of things to complain about, while other people are still listening to their crap.
consciousness razor@34
Sure. Maybe we can get back to this discussion when people who agree with your politics (or mine) wield significant political power at a national level in the US. Last time I checked, that requires winning an election.
Anyway, when this happens, I’ll concede that my point was incoherent bullshit.
Like I said, you (and others like you) would have to decide to vote for more progressive people in the first place, instead of finding ways to convince yourself (or more likely, consuming media which peddles the idea) that this is somehow “bad strategy.”
Why is that true? Because that’s where they fucking come from, PaulBC. Those candidates put into elected office come from ordinary people voting for them. If you came from someplace where they did the process in reverse, if there were such a place, your confusion would at least be understandable. But even then it would be confused.
So wait however long you fucking like — do you really think you have that luxury? — but that will not happen when people follow your boneheaded “advice” of voting against such candidates.
I have no reason to wait, and I don’t actually need you to concede anything.
consciousness razor to PaulBC:
Ah, generational change, then, due to the bottom-up approach.
(Sure, that’s what the Reaganites (arguably) began, and the payoff duly came about)
Sigh, well. You’re right that his health is probably not in danger. BUT.
Politics is about perceptions. Many people already thought Sanders was too old for the job. This incident will only make that perception more common. And he was already in third place. I think his chances of winning the nomination are pretty much dead now, even if he did raise a ton of money.
Disclosure: I prefer Warren too.
@abbeycadabra
Hm? Your take of The Vicar’s post is quite interesting itself. Imaginative too!
I wouldn’t get too attached to any candidate’s specific plan. Whoever wins, their plans will not survive Congress intact. The major choice is between, those who haven’t bothered to come up with anything, those who are mostly proposing incremental changes, and those proposing and broader overhaul of the system. Warren and Sanders both know that the time for pissant changes is past and we need that major upgrade.
And I like Warren because I like her. No insults about “propaganda” or conspiracy theories, please.
@39
Hardly. The first absolutely had a conspiracy theory, and the second absolutely defined me as a Democrat and watcher of MSNBC and other such American news and so forth, all of which is wrong.
If you do not understand all this, that speaks badly about your own reasoning on the subject.
Not that I expect the Sanders camp to come out and say it, but it’s almost certain that Sanders did have a heart attack and there could be some damage to his heart. I would like to see a full statement from the physicians that are treating him considering he’s running for President, and not some vague reassurances from someone like that doctor who gave a note of good health to Trump.
@abbeycadabra
You are wrong on both counts. Vicar’s first post meets precisely none of the elements of a conspiracy theory. And given that my post to you was specifically regarding your reply to Vicra’s first post and not any other of his, his second post is not relevant. That one is my fault though- I shuold have made it clear that I was referring to your post at number 12 and no other.
@aspleen
Why is it “almost certain” that it was a heart attack?
@aramad
From Vicar’s first post:
That’s a conspiracy theory, plain and simple. The only reason to say it’s not is if you believe there really is a shadowy cabal pumping out pro-Warren, anti-Sanders propaganda.
@aramad
My presumption that it was a heart attack is based on what information has been made public. Sanders had chest pains that were significant enough to prompt a trip to a doctor’s office where it was then deemed necessary to insert two stents in what was a blocked artery. So not a major heart attack but definitely a cardiac event that likely did result in some tissue damage. Again, it’s really incumbent on Sanders to be fully forthcoming about his medical condition now, and not let his flacks talk up how fine and dandy he is. After that farcical doctor who provided a bill of good health about Trump, we don’t need a Democratic Presidential candidate who is keeping important details about his health from us.
A report from the New York Times about Sanders this morning:
From the report:
Okay a few things…
1) I understand favoring Warren over Sanders. I don’t. Sanders is my first choice, followed by Warren. But I do understand the drive. I think Warren, however, is still too establishment.
2) Bernie Bros were and are 100% a real thing. Please don’t come in to a space full of people (myself included and I fucking voted for him) who were targeted by these assholes and pretend they don’t exist. Not just me, and not just people here, but public figures were harassed in the extreme for critiquing Sanders back in 2016. Figures like Imani Gandy, Elon James White, Rod Morrow, Karen Morrow… just to name like 0.01% of all the people who got targeted. And writing them off as “just trolls” is very much a No True Scotsman fallacy.
3) In the primary, you should 100% vote for your preferred candidate. If that’s Sanders (and it is for me), then vote for him. And obviously I hope he wins. However… Trump is a clear and present danger to the country and to the world. He cannot be allowed another four years. So if you refuse to vote for whoever the Democrat is in the general and Trump wins, it will be, at least in part, your fault. I reject the narrative that Biden would be worse than Trump… literally none of the running candidates would be worse than Trump.
So no matter what happens, in the general, at the very least vote to get Trump out.
It was a heart attack, as it turns out. Now Sanders is back in Vermont and taking several days off the campaign trail, but says he’ll be at the next Democratic debate on October 15th.
Bernie Sanders Leaves Hospital, Returns to Vermont Following Heart Attack