14th November 2016, 4:02 PM
So this article about why the Dems lost has some examples of anti-Bernie opposition research that would have been unleashed on him had he won: http://www.newsweek.com/myths-cost-democ...ion-521044
And this quote doesn't even mention the most obvious attack, that he's a socialist. Remember, in some polling socialists rank below atheists, last I remember!
Anyway, getting back to politics as they are, it is kind of amusing to see Trump reverse course on so many issues. People have to have known he'd be completely unreliable when it comes to holding any actual policy positions, but come on, even beyond the unbelievably horrible things he's said and probably also done, how could people have actually voted for someone this random? Unfortunately though, the two likely-to-be-worst things about the coming administration, the environment and courts, aren't on the list of things he's flipped; it's almost everything else. But with how random he is who knows what's going to happen. I presume bad things, but you never know for sure.
The other big issue now is, who should be the DNC chairman? Keith Ellison, the black Muslim progressive congressman from Minnesota, is the most prominent candidate, but Howard Dean (chair from ~'05-'08) said he might be interested too. Ellison is the likely insider choice, but can he run a winning nationwide effort? Because we very, very badly need to rebuild Democratic state parties nationwide, since Dean's 50 state strategy ended when he left and Obama did not continue anything like it, sadly; that has to be considered one of his bigger mistakes, I think. I'm sure Ellison will excite the left, but we need to rebuild the party nationwide, across all people hurt by the Republicans' policies whether or not they realize they should be voting Democratic... but on the other hand, exciting your base is a good way to help boost turnout, so that direction could help. But while energizing the base is absolutely crucial, we need to get beyond the base too, particularly to win back those Midwestern states which are trending Republican, but with the right message maybe could be brought back to our side... Republican policies will not, in reality, help rebuild the Rust Belt, after all! When the Trump presidency fails to do that, hopefully they turn on him, and that party.
Quote:Here are a few tastes of what was in store for Sanders, straight out of the Republican playbook: He thinks rape is a-ok. In 1972, when he was 31, Sanders wrote a fictitious essay in which he described a woman enjoying being raped by three men. Yes, there is an explanation for it—a long, complicated one, just like the one that would make clear why the Clinton emails story was nonsense. And we all know how well that worked out.
Then there’s the fact that Bernie was on unemployment until his mid-30s, and that he stole electricity from a neighbor after failing to pay his bills, and that he co-sponsored a bill to ship Vermont’s nuclear waste to a poor Hispanic community in Texas, where it could be dumped. You can just see the words, “Environmental racist” on Republican billboards. And if you can’t, I already did. They were in the Republican opposition research book as a proposal on how to frame the nuclear waste issue.
Also on the list: Sanders violated campaign finance laws, criticized Clinton for supporting the 1994 Crime Bill that he voted for, and he voted against the Amber Alert system.
The Republicans had at least four other damning Sanders videos (I don’t know what they showed) and the opposition research folder was almost two-feet thick.
And this quote doesn't even mention the most obvious attack, that he's a socialist. Remember, in some polling socialists rank below atheists, last I remember!
Anyway, getting back to politics as they are, it is kind of amusing to see Trump reverse course on so many issues. People have to have known he'd be completely unreliable when it comes to holding any actual policy positions, but come on, even beyond the unbelievably horrible things he's said and probably also done, how could people have actually voted for someone this random? Unfortunately though, the two likely-to-be-worst things about the coming administration, the environment and courts, aren't on the list of things he's flipped; it's almost everything else. But with how random he is who knows what's going to happen. I presume bad things, but you never know for sure.
The other big issue now is, who should be the DNC chairman? Keith Ellison, the black Muslim progressive congressman from Minnesota, is the most prominent candidate, but Howard Dean (chair from ~'05-'08) said he might be interested too. Ellison is the likely insider choice, but can he run a winning nationwide effort? Because we very, very badly need to rebuild Democratic state parties nationwide, since Dean's 50 state strategy ended when he left and Obama did not continue anything like it, sadly; that has to be considered one of his bigger mistakes, I think. I'm sure Ellison will excite the left, but we need to rebuild the party nationwide, across all people hurt by the Republicans' policies whether or not they realize they should be voting Democratic... but on the other hand, exciting your base is a good way to help boost turnout, so that direction could help. But while energizing the base is absolutely crucial, we need to get beyond the base too, particularly to win back those Midwestern states which are trending Republican, but with the right message maybe could be brought back to our side... Republican policies will not, in reality, help rebuild the Rust Belt, after all! When the Trump presidency fails to do that, hopefully they turn on him, and that party.