You got what you deserve, Republican Party...

[A Black Falcon]

Bernie should have never been in the race given all of his tremendous disadvantages. It was only because Clinton has so many glaring flaws as a candidate that this went anywhere.

Her main "glaring flaw" is that she's a woman. My mom is convinced that most liberals supporting Bernie do so because of sexism, and I can't call her entirely wrong because, well, it's mostly men who are the most angry at Hillary, and consciously or unconsciously there probably is a connection there... and she also thinks a socialist could never win, but that's fairly obvious; "socialist" still polls INCREDIBLY badly in this country.

If Hillary was a man in this same position, he surely would have someone running against him to his right, but I do think that that person would not be doing as well as Bernie is; sexism has to be a part of why he has done so well... or at least unconscious gender bias, but that's the same thing in the end. Sure, "we want someone more liberal" is real, but it's not the only factor, I don't think.

I don't know what you've been looking at, but the Clinton campaign has been hideously ugly towards Sanders for months. I won't forget Clinton surrogate John Lewis implying that Sanders wasn't involved in the civil rights movement so as to sway black voters, or that incident in Nevada where Dolores Huerta and America Ferrera invented tales of Sanders supporters chanting "English Only" in order to sway Hispanics against him. That was the shit that made me decide not to vote for her in the general election.

Sanders people have done things dozens of times worse towards Clinton and you know it. You're making a mountain out of a molehill, while ignoring everything done by your side, and that's wrong. (Oh, and that's not really what John Lewis said.) And if we go back to '08 with this, the Hillary dead-enders who claimed "I'll never vote for Obama because of [thing X he did to the Clintons] eventually almost all came around and supported Obama, because that's what you do -- you vote for your party's nominee once they has been chosen unless you have an INCREDIBLY good reason to not do so, like, they are Donald Trump. But the Democratic Party has not nominated someone like Trump probably ever, so that's safe.

For instance on the "Bernie people are awful' front, though, back in March I went to the caucus here. Look up my thread on how THAT went, with the people behind be badmouthing Hillary for hours while we waited in line. Or more recently, last Friday and Saturday, I was a Hillary delegate at the Maine Democratic Convention. Now, Bernie won this state 2-to-1, so it was a very heavily Bernie-favoring crowd even though the race is over. So what happened? Well, at the convention, there were two big speeches, one for each candidate. Bernie had local ex-state government guy Troy Jackson and some person from Vermont, and Hillary had ex-Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank... and a bunch of people decided that it'd be a good idea to heckle Barnie, because he supports Hillary and is thus awful, a corporate shill, etc, etc. It was unbelievable, I've never seen anything like that! How could people be so rude that at the state convention you HECKLE a speaker just because they disagree with you, so much and so consistently that sometimes they cannot speak? Terrible behavior there, it really encapsulated the attitude I have seen from Bernie fans -- people too likely to be vocally obnoxious towards the other candidate, and irrationally angry at people who agree with you 95% of the time, threatening to help people who agree with you near-0% of the time win out of pointless spite. As Barney Frank said, he voted once for someone he thought was perfect... but by the time he stood for re-election, he realized that he didn't think he was perfect anymore (because no one can be perfect and get anything done in congress.). Heh... amusing stuff. :)

Oh yeah, and our local House of Representatives member, Chellie Pingreee, also was heckled by people angry that she has endorsed Hillary. How could any so-called "progressive" support Clinton? I must heckle them until they come to their senses! Get over yourself, there are plenty of great reasons to support Hillary.

Naturally, there was no heckling of any Bernie supporter's speech. I have never heard anyone insult Bernie like the things people say about Hillary to Hillary supporters.

[URL="http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/04/24/charles-koch-says-he-could-possibly-support-hillary-clinton/?_r=0"]Is this happening by accident?
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No, that's a reaction to how much he dislikes Trump. The Kochs have been notably silent in the Republican presidential race this year because they didn't like any of the top candidates. At this point, I expect them to mostly ignore the presidential race and spend their money on trying to help lower-level Republicans win, to hold Congress in a likely Hillary Clinton administration. So we've got a lot of work to do to win Congress too, if we want anything to get done in the next term!

There has been equal amounts of vitriol from Clinton supporters online.

That is absolutely false. The hate is extremely disproportionate! I've experienced it both in person and online, and it's bad. It's so bad that we have so-called liberals repeating right-wing talking points about Hillary, which is just absurd. There are some Hillary fans disappointed by Bernie's negative turns, and I am disappointed by his constant intonations that she's probably corrupt but I can't prove it so I won't actually say it (so don't, if you have no proof and it's not true!), and by him not giving up now that he has lost and we need to unite to start working to defeat probably the most dangerous person to run for President in a very long time, but I still like him on a policy level, certainly, and I imagine most Hillary supporters would agree there. Both are great on policy though; 93% similar voting records in congress and all that.

I've seen tons of it. I get it, too. People get heated when they support their side. I just don't get why people support her. The best thing you can say about her is that Trump is worse. Clinton won't help out the poor or make things better around the world, because she's a throwback to the Democrats of the 80s and 90s, who were (to coin a phrase) cuckolded by Reagan and are afraid to be progressive in any meaningful sense.

Why do I support her? Because she's the better candidate. Because she has actual plans to turn her campaign promises into policies, something he does not have. Because she cares about the details, and not just empty rhetoric. Because it's time for a woman president. Because America will never elect a socialist. Because Bernie's fans have been incredibly obnoxious and rude, while Hillary supporters never behave the same way back.

(I supported Hillary over Obama in 2008 as well, you may or may not remember. She had the more liberal health care plan, among other things.)

She won't inspire voters to take back congress.

She'll do much more for this than Bernie would. Bernie's problem is that he's too absolute, you've got to be fully with him for him to support you . So, he has done almost no fundraising for Democratic house or senate campaign committees this year, while Hillary has raised a lot of money for the DNC and lower-level committees, to get some of the money we will need to compete in November. With Bernie as the nominee, where does the money to win tough senate races come from? He won't help them, they aren't pure enough for him. So we lose those races, along with the Presidency, and give Republicans a trifecta? Awesome.

And as for "energy and excitement", if that was real then Bernie would be winning the nomination.

Hell, she'll probably be facing impeachment from day one because that's what the GOP loves to do. In 2008, America wanted Hope and Change. Now, the best we can hope for is "Let's Not Even Bother Trying".

No, it's "change, but at a pace that actually will happen."

She is winning the Democratic primary because her surrogates control the party. The rules in place favored her, and she has Super PAC money in virtually limitless amounts.

That helped, but no, she's winning because people decided she was the best candidate running. Bernie's losing because of his own problems, foremost among them his total failure to appeal to minorities.

That won't be the case against Trump.

Money is certainly a huge, huge problem, yes. Citizen's United was an anti-Hillary group in 2008, remember, and the lasting impact of that decision that allowed an infinite flood of money into politics is horrible and sad. There were big problems before that, but that decision made things much worse. But even so, the Democrats have a very favorable map, and it should be easy for Hillary to win this election. All credible polling shows Hillary with big leads, and Trump's record-breaking negatives combined with Obama's rising popularity numbers should be enough to overcome Hillary's own negative numbers, and break that final glass ceiling. Here's hoping.