Maybe a too generous characterization of Biden, though.
I’d still vote for any of them over that infantile twerp on the end.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Maybe a too generous characterization of Biden, though.
I’d still vote for any of them over that infantile twerp on the end.
My problem with Warren is that she split the vote. Id also feel the same if she became the lead and Sanders didnt drop out way earlier. They might have had a bigger lead if they ran only one contender against the centrists.
Logicalcat, the vote hasn’t happened yet, how could Warren split it? The whole point of the primary is to decide on the best candidate. Should she have looked in her crystal ball and shut up while supporting the eventual candidate? A lot of regressive pundits would have liked that.
@2, why those mighty majority states from Super Tuesday, who count for so many electors all other states need only to save their tax dollars by canceling all future elections!
After all, that is 99.99% of the population of the US, to some mutant minds.
I guess I don’t have to track my delayed voter registration, as the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania can cancel the primary and hell, the entire election cycle, since our votes don’t count. While we’re at it, we’ll hold onto our federal tax money as well, since we don’t count, the other not counting states can also do the same.
And just think if that group of states withdrew their representatives and senators, so much for a quorum!
If we were that defeatist during WWII, we’d have surrendered to Japan after Pearl was bombed!
I would switch the Warren and Sanders ones around. Warren was the one who tried to destroy Sanders with her improbable tale of their private dinnertime discussion. Does anyone here really believe he told her that a woman couldn’t be president? And now she is coming across as vindictive enough to actually sacrifice her cherished beliefs (shared with Bernie), to give us a disatsrous Biden candidacy. Sanders tried to reach out and shake her hand at the convention, but no, he wouldn’t ‘bend the knee’ and is now scorned.
By the way, read Nathan Robinson’s new Current Afrairs piece and tell me that Biden in any way resembles the decent and humane Onion Knight.
The vote for the primary im talking about.
@ #4
“Does anyone here really believe he told her that a woman couldn’t be president? ”
I do. What’s so hard to believe about that?
Like PZ said. All the candidates are flawed. This is hers. And i didnt like it either when Bernie did it in 2016 primary either.
How can the meme creator do my boy Davis dirty like that?
Davos*
Would Gabbard get the description of “mysterious loyalties; kind of scary” if she was white and Christian? If you look into how she’s acted as an elected official, she’s pretty easy to read: loyal to her constituents and more broadly to members of the military (not to the military’s current organizational status quo, importantly). According to her own staff, she’s a bit short-tempered and disorganized, but she’s not mysterious nor, to my eyes, particularly scary. She’s probably more Stannis than anyone.
Klobachur is just the midwestern white Kamala Harris. She’s neither competent nor level-headed, just fiercely defensive of the status quo because she’s managed to secure power under it and loves law enforcement more than justice. But she’s got that midwestern charm about her, so she got to stay in longer than the brown-skinned coastal Harris did. Sansa isn’t really a fit for Klobachur. More like Littlefinger, just less so.
Biden is Renly: all sizzle no steak. To suggest he’s Davos is more than generous, it’s “not even wrong.”
The description of Dany is entirely a critique of Sanders’ supporters and doesn’t actually address anything about Sanders, but I guess this is par for the course for how we talk about Sanders. It’s not about him or his ideas or his policies, just how some people who say they’re his supporters are mean on Twitter.
Biden is definitely Grand Maester Pycelle.
Mayor Pete is a young Grand Maester Pycelle, who time-traveled fifty years into the future.
I can’t decide with Bernie…. Mance Rayder, Tormund. Brienne, Samwell
People act like Trump is the Night King (before the final season), but he’s just some random sick fuck like Ramsay Bolton.
So Sanders gets the genocidal maniac and Biden is one of the only good people in Westeros? No.
Biden’s more like Stannis, close to the previous, less awful ruler and certainly better than the current one but still has some terrible views.
I don’t think Sanders is really like any GoT character since they nearly all either don’t care about or hate peasants.
My indecision with Bernie sort of helped….
Warren is Jaime Lannister. A smart, charismatic leader, who often wants to do the right thing, but also makes lots of bad choices.
Bloomberg is Tycho Nestoris, representative of the Iron Bank.
Now that I think about it, Mance Rayder fits Sanders pretty well. Anti elite, cares about climate change and some unpleasant (cannibal) followers.
“Do you know what it takes to unite ninety clans, half of whom want to massacre the other half for one insult or another? They speak seven different languages in my army. The Thenns hate the Hornfoots, the Hornfoots hate the Ice-river clans, everyone hates the cave people. So, you know how I got moon-worshipers and cannibals and giants to march together in the same army?…I told them we were all going to die if we don’t get south. ‘Cause that’s the truth.” -Mance Rayder to Jon Snow
Fuckin’ cave people. But that just comes with the territory, when you need millions of ordinary people to work in solidarity for a bigger cause.
@clevehicks:
Sort of. I believe that neither of them are outright liars on this issue, so I believe it’s possible that he said something about women facing an extra hurdle that was reasonably interpreted as saying a woman couldn’t be president.
Think about the sentence:
The unspoken predicate is, “If they could help it.”
Now, someone who believes in women’s rights and women’s potential could honestly speak that sentence meaning to convey something about the depth and ferocity of right wing resistance to women exercising power and, because they don’t actually believe that Fox has enough power to stop a good woman candidate, can simultaneously believe that a woman could be elected. If Bernie said something like this, the literal interpretation of “Fox would never let this happen” is that it can’t happen. But the intent of the speaker is to say, “Fox would never let it happen if they could help it, so it’s a good thing that Fox News doesn’t get the final say.”
This idea that there’s a literal interpretation that means one thing and an intent that was trying to mean something else is entirely consistent with what both parties have said happened, so long as Bernie’s memory is more about what he tried to communicate than about what other people in the room actually heard – which he doesn’t control and which he might not even know about. People might not have remarked on it until after Bernie left the room (or they did, depending on how it happened).
So, yeah. I believe that happened. I don’t believe Warren’s camp was making anything up, and yes, I’ve had lots of people say to me at various different times things amounting to, “You can’t do this b/c you’re a girl/trans person/queer/cripple,” who then tried to explain later that they just meant that bad people would resist my efforts. That conversation is really. It really happens. And regardless of the motives of the misheard speaker, it really is fucking discouraging to the people who have to listen to those statements over and over again.
“I’d still vote for any of them over that infantile twerp on the end.”
Or, in fact, a damp dishrag with a bad child’s drawing of Atilla the Hun on it. Low bar, is what I’m saying.
@ clevehicks, #4
Oh for fuck’s sake.
Warren didn’t let that slip; that was chatter from some anonymous member of her campaign. Warren didn’t bring it up during the debate; a moderator blindsided her with the question. Warren clearly didn’t want to make an issue of it, and tried get off the topic. The moderator demanded she answer the question, and refused to let anyone else speak until she gave the answer the moderator wanted to hear (same shit the mods pulled with her healthcare plan).
There is zero reason to believe that Warren was trying to sabotage Sanders with that rumor, because there was literally no upside for her in talking about the issue. She’s not a fucking fool; she knew she’d get crucified by dumbass misogynistic Berniebros* for talking about it, just as she clearly knew the moderator was setting her up. When the mod pulled that stunt, she could either lie (and trash her own campaign staff in the process) or she could bite the bullet and tell the truth. She chose to tell the truth, and I respect her more for it. There was no upside to doing so, and she pretty clearly knew that, but she did it anyway.
Do I believe that Sanders believes a woman can’t be president? I doubt it. Do I believe that he said something that could be interpreted in good faith as such? Absolutely. See, the thing about this incident is that it’s entirely possible for both parties to be telling the truth, and nobody to be a horrible backstabbing harpy. Misunderstandings happen.
CNN assassinated Warren’s campaign on live TV. First, they demanded her answer, then they “accidentally” left the mikes on to catch the argument after the debate. It was an effective bit of corporate propaganda, as evidenced by the number of fools uncritically repeating the lie that Warren had set the whole thing up… despite the fact that she would have known it was political suicide. I had hoped people would be smart enough to see through it, but once again I am severely disappointed in humanity.
*This is the first and hopefully the last time I use that term, so please BE LESS STUPID. I support Sanders, but you lot make that damn embarrassing.
And for FFS, Sanders and Biden now set on tearing each other apart? Seriously guys? This was just a battle, not the war. You haven’t come up against the might of the Trump warlord yet and you are determined to reduce each other’s capacity to fight that war? Please, try to convince people in a positive way that you are the best candidate, not by destroying your opponent from the same side.
Oh, and I know there is a long way to go, but if the Democratic primaries have done nothing else they have shown the depth of talent among the candidates, talent that must be harnessed in the Democratic cabinet to come, and the VP, and announced well in advance of November to contrast with the gaggle of incompetents and sycophants and religious bigots and far-Right ideologues and loony tunes college boys that Trump has surrounded himself with. Don’t pick some nonentity VP who is there to geographically balance the ticket in some imaginary way. Think back to the failed Democratic candidates of the last 50 years. How many can you remember, and did any of them help the Party get elected?
Any attempt to map the characters of GoT onto the US political elite is doomed to misrepresentation. Sometimes they’ve misrepresented the characer, sometimes they’ve misrepresented the politician, and in the case of Snow/Buttigieg they’ve misrepresented both.
Wait, what? Does anyone actually think the candidates and the characters are literally the same? What’s going on here? Help, Google Translate, help!
Now I’m ever gladder I never watched that stupid fucking show.
vucodlak:
You seem to have missed big parts of the story…..
Biden may surprise a lot of progressives in the general election. My theory is that for decades, due to the presence of Democratic primary caucuses (which skew towards activists), and due to the lack of ranked choice voting in the Democratic primaries causing the moderate votes to be split, Democrats have consistently been choosing presidential candidates that are more liberal than Democrat voters in general. That includes McGovern, Dukakis, Mondale, Gore, Kerry, and even Hillary Clinton and Obama. And the person who made those problems more visible is – Sanders.
To further the GoT metaphor, Trump and Bolsonaro are about to meet to ensure Venezuela returns to fascism.
CripDyke@22–
Fair comment. I shouldn’t be too critical of what is meant to be a bit of fun. It’s just that it seemed lazy to me, trying to shove people into descriptions that don’t fit even remotely — for instance Davos, far from being a poor leader, is one of the very few characters in GoT who reliably makes good decisions, gives good counsel even when it costs him personally, and gets difficult things done. And as others have pointed out, there are much better matches for some of these politicians but that would have required delving into the secondary GoT characters.
The polling is against this with american populations.
The primary is singularly ill designed though, given how poor it is at choosing winning candidates.
@ consciousness razor, #24
Well, that’s certainly very long-winded, mostly irrelevant, and doesn’t change a damn thing.
I was aware of the back and forth between the campaigns before the debate. I am aware that Sanders’ campaign started it by breaking the agreement. I’m not crazy about the way Warren’s campaign handled their response to it, but I can understand feeling pissed off and betrayed.
I’m aware that there is more than one propaganda outlet attacking progressive candidates. The New York Times and The Washington Post are top of the birdcage-liner pile in that regard, so I’m not sure how that’s supposed to be something I’ve “missed;” CNN still fired the fatal shot. The question the moderator asked was a no-win proposition for Warren- whatever she said, she would be attacked endlessly for it. And here we are.
I’m really not sure why I’m supposed to be impressed by an article that essentially accuses Warren of being a hysterical woman. Warren knows damn well what that ‘innocent’ script was about, and she’s quite right to view it as an attack. It wasn’t nearly as subtle as the author that article, and whoever wrote the script in the first place, seem to think it was.
Seriously, just stop. You are not helping Sanders. That is your goal, right?
You’d vote for Gabbard who is actually on Putin’s payroll and can’t live without him over the guy who is just sort of friends with Putin?
Which one would have chosen blood and teeth over Bailey? Because we nearly had it.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/06/warren-team-wonders-how-they-blew-it-122628
This is not what the article said. Many political campaigns overreact and miscalculate and so forth. Many individual people do, no matter their gender. Things like that are part of ordinary human behavior. I’ve gotten pretty used to it, haven’t you?
I wanted this to be a fact-based discussion, so I linked to an article which conveniently offers a bunch of evidence from a variety of sources, all in one place.
Your words:
“Warren didn’t let that slip” — this is unknown at best, and it’s implausible, given the evidence
“a moderator blindsided her with the question” — certainly false, given the evidence
As soon as the words “America first” left Gabbard’s mouth I smelled a rat. She is the only one who would make me stay home rather than vote.
Any one but Trump
Oh ffs, can Clinton’s baseless smear of Gabbard as a Russian agent just die in a fire already? What an absolutely cruel attempt at character assassination, and all because Gabbard wasn’t willing to silently go along with the DNC rigging the 2016 primary for Clinton.
The dnc rigging the 2016 primary was russian propaganda. So way to undermine your own point.
Yup. The Russians entirely invented the statements made by DNC members, on the record at times, that they were working with the Clinton campaign to discredit Sanders (which, btw, they have every right to do! But the DNC talking out of both sides of their mouth about the primary selection process is what makes this move clearly into sketchy territory). The Russians entirely convinced Donna Brazile to say she investigated the 2016 primary and found evidence that it was rigged in favor of Clinton. And those Russians even convinced Warren to say she thought the 2016 primary was rigged (oh man, if Warren was so easily duped by the Russians, that’s a darn good reason to keep her out of the White House!). Yup. All those Russians’ fault. Those sneaky, super powerful Russians that they can do all these things without… any?… evidence to link their involvement to these things.
Nothing like alleging a conspiracy theory, I guess.
Donna Brazile didnt find shit. She had a book to sell and a dumb clickbait article ran with it. Her ‘evidence’ is some dumb shit that wasnt even hidden. Its some shit I already knew about and Clinton admitted but Donna twisted to mean something extra than it actually is.
And yes Warren was wrong and was duped too. Along with you.
At the end of the day Obama was an outsider who the dnc disliked and favored Clinton over and he won anyway. Why? Because he was a better candidate. Ppl forget that. Bernie doesnt know how to build allies and doesnt run campaigns well. And he lost. Seems to be happening again.
At the end of the day if the dnc wanted to fuck over Sanders they would just not let him run since he wasnt a democrat. And since he was polling less than 1% no one would give a shit if he was barred. So what was the result of all that “rigging”, to have Bernie Sanders use their platform and resources to become a houshold name? Lol.
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. Rigging the primary would involve a logistical nightmare. https://www.google.com/amp/s/benjaminstudebaker.com/2016/04/22/the-dnc-didnt-screw-bernie-the-voters-did/amp/
Oh and lets not forget the rest. Because the dnc rigging conspiracy didnt stop there did it? There was also Hillary murdering that lawyer right? Or how about stealing delegates? Every single one of these plus the obes above were purpetrated by russian news sourses like Lee Camp in Russia Today and then diseminated by Bernie Sanders supporters.
Even Bernie Sanders admited this recently. He said Russia was trying to divide us. And he was right.
FTR, Sanders lost in 2016 because he failed to build bridges to communities that weren’t made up of working class white people. Say what you want about his past… he utterly failed to speak to black people, including (and especially) Black Lives Matter, and take on issues they actually care about, like reparations, in 2016.
And if South Carolina is any indication, it’s happened again. The DNC primary wasn’t rigged just because they openly favored Clinton then and clearly don’t like Sanders in general. That sucks for Sanders, yes, but rigging was not involved. Voters didn’t want him in 2016. And Super Tuesday clearly favored Biden, whether we like it or not. Now, of course, there are a lot of primaries still to come, which could flip things in favor of Sanders. But regardless, Super Tuesday has obviously gone to Biden, and if you’re going to claim Russian meddling on that, you’re full of shit (not that anyone here has… I’m just heading that claim off at the pass).
As for the meme in the OP… why do I feel like this was made by a bitter Warren supporter who’s decided to throw their lot in with Biden? Not that I disagree with the characterization of Warren; I actually think that’s accurate. And I don’t feel comfortable critiquing the character comparisons because I didn’t watch, and have no real interest in, Game of Thrones.
I do think it’s entirely likely that neither Sanders nor Warren are lying about that 2018 conversation. Given the way Sanders characteristic bluntness and seeming inability to choose his words carefully sometimes, I fully believe that what he was trying to say was that Trump would probably use a lot of misogyny against a woman opponent, but the way he said it left room to interpret it as him saying a woman couldn’t be president.
How?
I don’t know. I’m not Sanders or Warren. Sadly, it’s impossible for us to ever actually hear the exact conversation and hear what was actually said. But I fully believe that that’s what happened… an understandable misunderstanding, exacerbated by the media.
What I absolutely take issue with in this meme is the characterization of Sanders. I’m actually sick and tired of hearing all this “my way or the highway” bullshit about him (because that’s what “not me; us” means, I guess), and I’m sick of his asshole supporters being used against him as if the other candidates didn’t have shitty, toxic supporters.
I was there for the genesis of the Bernie Bros back in 2016. I literally watched it happen. It all started with Glenn Greenwald and a bunch of his sycophants attacking Imani Gandy on Twitter for her mild criticism of Sanders’ reaction to the Black Lives Matter protesters at Netroots Nation. I got attacked myself for defending Imani. Specifically, several people on Twitter accused Imani of lying about how Sanders reacted, so I showed them the unedited video. I got more than one DM accusing me of being a Russian bot.
So I was fucking there for it.
And it’s fucking overblown. I got attacked by Clinton supporters back in 2016, as well… at about the same rates. Yes, there were Bernie Bros. There were also Clinton Bros. And it’s the same shit today. But Sanders is the only one who’s asked to stand accountable to his asshole fans because he’s the outsider. No one cares about the asshole fans of the other candidates. I don’t get that, and I’m sick of it.
@6 tomh
“belief” is easy. I still don’t believe it. Good evidence please.
jack16
@jack16:
If you don’t believe either account b/c you’re simply saying, “I don’t know” and/or “I can’t know” that’s one thing. But we don’t actually have a recording of what was said during the purported conversation, so unless you’re saying that you don’t know, then you’re saying you believe Bernie. And there’s no better evidence for believing Bernie than for believing Warren, so either fess up that you don’t know or … evidence please?
So the guy who has been the most consistent and principled is being compared to a mass murderer because of mean people on Twitter?
As for Warren, the reason so many people don’t believe her is because she’s lied about being native American, she claimed to be such when applying for post secondary, she lied about her dad being a janitor, she lied about her kids not going to private school, and she waited until the night before the final debate before Iowa. It was clearly a political move, and she has a bad history. So no, we can’t know 100 percent for sure, but the idea that it’s anywhere near a 50/50 toss up when Bernie has been saying that a woman could be president for decades (even when it wasn’t cool) and she’s been caught lying on plenty of occasions, is just bullshit.
@ consciousness razor, #32
No, the article doesn’t literally say the words “Elizabeth Warren is a hysterical woman who should calm her ladyparts and stop running for president, because she’s so obviously unfit.” Instead, it’s filled with innuendo, insinuation, and dog-whistles.
It starts by completely dismissing the attacks launched by the Sanders campaign, saying “They were couched in language that went out of its way to be friendly to Warren.” So let’s take a look at this “friendly” jab, shall we?
First, the dismissive tone of the first two lines. A nice little verbal pat on the head. I’m a cis-man, and I’ve never been patronized for my gender, but I am disabled and not neurotypical. I’m know patronizing bullshit when I see it. People who talk to or about me like that receive very rude gestures in return.
Second, this is dog-whistle-y bullshit. It’s more subtle than anything Republicans can manage these days, but on the level of saying “cut welfare and end forced busing” instead of (one word extremely ugly repeated three times, which does not summon the Ghost with the Most). They’re saying that Warren doesn’t speak to Real Americans(TM), just those evil East Coast Elites(TM) that all Real Americans(TM) hate.
Third, the last line is saying she can’t possibly win. That’s not what I call “friendly.”
So, having dismissed the attack as harmless rather than the carefully-worded hatchet job that it actually is, the author then moves on to characterize the Warren campaign’s reaction as “flip[ping] out over [the harmless thing]” and “oddly disproportionate.” What was this oddly disproportionate response? Warren said:
Wow, she really flew off the handle there, huh? Must be that time of the month, wink-wink, nudge-nudge, barf.
The article then goes on to accuse the Warren campaign of being “remarkably thin-skinned” and “eager for an opportunity to go negative.” Warren was dead-on when she said she’d been trashed, but women are supposed to forgive and forget.
You linked to an article so slanted that my monitor nearly slid off my desk when I opened it. Propaganda has its uses, but I’m not sure what you actually think you’re accomplishing by directing that at me. I’ve already said I’m voting for Sanders. Yes, Warren was my first choice, but she’s out now. By sharing an anti-Warren article full of sexist crap, all you’re doing is annoying me.
I’m still voting for Sanders, because I vote based on the policy, and not on the behavior of Sanders’ followers. You’re still not helping your case. It’s easy enough for me to dismiss that kind of crap- I have never been the target of sexist attacks. I might not be so forgiving if I had to put up with that kind of garbage day after day.
That she mentioned it to someone, ostensibly someone on her staff, isn’t the same thing as putting out a statement about it. Nor does it mean that it was ever intended to be used, and I very much doubt it was. Warren isn’t stupid enough to think that would help her campaign, even if she had video/audio proof that Sanders had said “women can’t be president.”
Alright, so I chose my words poorly. Warren probably should have expected the scumbags at CNN to hit her with the question, and should have been better prepared. Doesn’t change the fact that the question was worded so that there was no answer she could possibly give that wouldn’t hurt her badly. I believe she answered honestly, but it really doesn’t matter.
I should have said the moderator attacked her, because the question wasn’t really a question. She was saying: ‘Isn’t it true you’re just a lying, castrating harpy?’ It’s not so different from the way they always asked ‘Will you raise taxes to pay for your M4A plan?’ and refuse to allow her to explain how it will save people money in the long run, demanding instead that she give them a soundbite her opponent can run in attack ads.
Is there actual evidence that Tulsi is paid by Putin? I’ve seen plenty of allegations (mainly by Warren supporters) but nothing concrete.
@45
No, there isn’t. It’s a baseless accusation by Clinton, who sees Russian conspiracies everywhere – not helped by the very real communications and attempted collusion between Russian officials and the Trump campaign (that only failed because the Trump campaign was so incompetent, but they did try) – because she was denied a presidency she thought she was owed even though she barely put any effort into trying to earn it. And it’s now been picked up by people who support other establishment-friendly Democratic primary candidates.
It’s just an easy lie to effectively spew out because, as my initial post here implied, you can say anything you want about a non-Christian person of color and a lot of people in the US will take it seriously. Especially if the allegation comes from a Christian white person. Baseless accusations are just an easy way for white politicians to knee-cap a political rival in the US. And while Gabbard doesn’t have the political charisma or media savvy of someone like AOC or the decades-long history of consistently supporting progressive values of someone like Sanders, she does stand on that side of things, so she’s just as much a rival to the establishment as AOC, Tliab, Khanna, Sanders, and so on.
@46
She was recently called a traitor on Full Frontal. Seems a bit hypocritical.
As long as you leave out her aggressive stance toward Muslims, including support of nationalists in the BJP like Modi. She criticizes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but she wants to continue the “war on terror” and merely thinks she can do it better, like a lot of other Dems. (The idea is apparently more drones dropping bombs, less boots on the ground, as if that were any better.) Also, her views on LGBTQ issues and abortion are pretty murky — very conservative not so long ago and now it’s just not clear.
That said, people shouldn’t be peddling that Red Scare idiocy.
@48
Her record as an elected official would suggest that her views on LGBTQ issues are very clear. At every opportunity, she has voted to expand LGBTQ rights and legal protections. She has addressed her past views – views she held in her teens and young adulthood before she served in the military. That it keeps coming up as though she is still the same person she was 15 years ago is just dumbfounding. If Obama was allowed to “evolve” on the gay marriage issue, if Clinton was allowed to be considered a staunch ally of the LGBTQ community despite championing the “separate but equal” civil union nonsense in the 2000s, how come Tulsi’s 100% unwavering support during her time as an elected official is not enough for her to be perceived as anything other than “murky” on those issues? Oh right, she’s not a man like Obama and she’s not white like Clinton, so the rules are very different for her.
And, near as I can tell, her views on abortion are the same as Clintons. I certainly don’t think they go far enough in support of women’s rights. I hate the idea that we should continue to think of abortion as a moral dilemma by saying they need to be rare in the phrase “safe, legal, and rare” but that just seems to be the overall consensus by Democrats about what makes one super hunky dory on the issue of abortion. So, Clinton gets to be heralded as this wonderful Champion of Women’s Rights but Gabbard is still “murky.” Sure, she could be better, but she’s no worse than any of the other women who’ve run for president.
Again, bringing it back to the meme PZ shared, nothing about Gabbard would warrant her being considered mysterious if a white Christian woman were saying the exact same things. This is the insidiousness of the deeply embedded racism, sexism, and intersection thereof that pervades US culture. For as impossible a standard as Obama was held to by a good chunk of the US population and the corporate media for being a colored man, for as impossible a standard as Clinton, Warren, and Klobachur were held to by those same people and media outlets because they’re women, Gabbard and Harris (despite both being imperfect flawed candidates) are held to something even more impossible so no matter how good they are it’ll never be enough. Gabbard does have problems, she isn’t perfect, but where she falls in our screwed up political spectrum is still firmly on the progressive side of things. She can certainly do better in some areas; but then again, so can Sanders, who doesn’t get critiqued for being not progressive enough but only for having some online supporters who are mean.
I don’t have accept either of those premises. I wasn’t happy with either of their positions, and I’m still against that crap. You can say this sort of thing to some other Dems, who were dishing out apologetics about it for either or both of them, but not to me.
I’m not holding her previous views against her or anything. I would just like it to be clearer where she stands now, that’s all. Voting patterns aren’t really what I’m looking for…. Maybe I should go look for more information, but it hasn’t been a practical concern for me. Do you know if she’s said very much about this stuff in speeches and whatnot, beyond (perhaps) pointing at her voting record?
This is unfair, and it comes out of nowhere as a response to me.
I think she’s not progressive/leftist enough about foreign policy. With some domestic policy, I honestly just don’t know. But that’s it: her political views, which is a completely legitimate subject of criticism.
foamywolf said:
and then kome said:
Well, it’s not baseless. If Clinton actually said that you could certainly claim that it’s insufficiently evidenced to reasonably believe it, but not-yet-proved isn’t the same as baseless. Think of investigating a crime. There’s the possibility of having enough evidence to start poking around to see if there’s more evidence. There’s the possibility have having enough evidence that you can get a search warrant and compel the production of more evidence There’s the possibility of having enough evidence to get an arrest warrant … or to indict someone … or to hold them without bail … or to convict them.
These are all different levels of evidence and “baseless” would mean you couldn’t even possibly reach the first one – enough evidence to make a reasonable person want to poke around and see if there’s more evidence that can be found without violating rights, confining anyone, or compelling production.
All that said, I believe that the statement you’re referring to was Clinton saying nothing about Tulsi being paid by Putin. That was never alleged by Clinton at all. She said that (or, well, clearly implied) that Gabbard was Russia’s favorite candidate in the Dem primary – which says nothing about paychecks. She also said that the Republicans were “grooming” the same person to run as a third-party spoiler candidate, (and being the same person, this “groomed” person would thus also have to be Gabbard). But grooming for a third party run is also not about paychecks, not to mention the fact that the Republican Party does not include Putin.
So unless you’ve got another Clinton statement around there somewhere, you’re mistaken or just plain lying. Why do that? Clinton is abominable on many issues. She’s certainly as worthy of criticism as any other human being. Why not get your facts straight and/or choose not to lie about what she said? There’s no point in criticizing her for the things she’s NOT guilty of.
…as a follow up…
@foamywolf, #47:
Bwhuh? You might mistake Full Frontal for a news show, but as much as the content is driven by actual current events, it’s a comedy show. So…
a) you should maybe expect jokes and maybe consider that someone being labeled a “traitor” might be humorous exaggeration, maybe?
and
b) the hypocrisy would be what? That Samantha Bee is a traitor because she’s … Canadian? It’s not like she actually hid her nationality and it’s also not like Gabbard is related to the Trudeaus or something. It’s really looking like you’re not very up on the way the meaning of the word “hypocritical” has been defined for the most recent couple of centuries.
Joseph McCarthy possibly had evidence of a bunch of communist spies. And I almost forgot: it might appear to be the case that there was evidence of a big gay conspiracy too, whatever that is.
Also, I possibly have evidence that Joe Biden is a North Korean cyborg which is running low on batteries.
Is this baseless? The world may never know.
@51:
You really want to go down that rabbit hole? You’ve excused basically every attack against Warren by those mean Bernie-bros.
It’s still an attack on her. And saying “it’s just a joke” has some bad connotations, especially when hinting that someone is a traitor.
My turn to go “bwhuh?” I thought Full Frontal was a US show. The hypocrisy is Warren supporters complaining about mean Bernie-bros, then turning around and viciously smearing Gabbard. Might be that Full Frontal aren’t hypocritical, merely very biased, but it’s certainly a part of a larger pattern.