goon wrote:

Can you describe Warren as pro war? I read up on an article that suggested her views are closer aligned to her 'establishment' counterparts and while there were some ugly comments, particularly on the Israel-Palestine conflict, I didn't see anything in there that was particularly hawkish.

I think supporting stuff like Yemen reflects terribly on her. She did vote to end support for the Saudi coalition eventually, but that was Bernie Sanders's bill, and he had tried to push that agenda for years to deaf ears. Anti-war activists with roots in Yemen from her own state contacted Warren as early as 2015 and tried to get her to speak out, but she patted them on the head and explained that bombings and famine was fine because there was antidemocratic stuff going on over there.

It summarises Warren to me: she wouldn't lift a finger when it was the right but hard thing to do, but once Obama was out and opinion had already swung she threw her vote behind it. She was more than happy to support it through most of the blockades that starved god knows how many children to death though. The numbers were over 80 000 last time I checked, but those are just the official numbers and assumed to be far from the whole story.

She cheered on the slaughter in Gaza in 2014, she backed the Iran sanctions that have essentially wrecked their economy. She backed the sanctions that wrecked Venezuela. She voted for Trump's inflated military budgets as late as last year. She's backed all of Obama's ill-conceived wars and conflicts.

More alarming than her foreign policy record are her foreign policy advisors though. They're a veritable who's who of people who have either helped to engineer or cheered on some of the grossest war crimes of the last two decades. There's a list of some of them here: https://thegrayzone.com/2020/01/26/elizabeth-warren-foreign-policy-team-pro-war-regime-change/

She's someone who is openly supporting the bloated defense industry and american militarism. Her record is not as horrible as Biden's, but that's only because Biden's complicity in places like Libya, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and Honduras runs much deeper on account of being an active part of Obama's administration. Not being as awful as one of the vilest persons on the planet is not exactly gold standard. Give Warren a chance and she'd repeat the exact same mistakes. She was perfectly prepared for it.

I feel a genuine despair for the parts of the world that are mostly inhabited by poor muslims. They're the ones who keep dying while these horror clowns keep on pushing their murder agendas to grow the US economy. Although the rest of us won't be far behind this time if the climate movement is really going to have to depend on either Trump or Biden.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
@AOC

Today is a hard day for so many people who love and respect @ewarren and admire her campaign - and I include myself in that. Elizabeth Warren is a progressive lion, a champion for working families, and her commitment to inclusivity is exemplary. Thank you for being a role model.

^^

That's how you include people.

I don't think there's much love lost between the sanders and warren camps. They may both be 'progressive' but the way in which they go about achieving their aims is different. Bernie has never really attacked her, but by virtue of being his authentic self and being further left, comparatively makes warren appear to be the watered down version. It puts her choices in a poorer light. if bernie hadnt run again,  she might've skated on choices like taking PAC money. Warren supporters would argue that bernies pure, uncompromising approach was always doomed to fail and the the incremental approach adopted by warren is the winning strategy. Fron what I've seen I'm not convinced that had bernie not run, warren would've able to garner the energy and enthusiasm required to be the nominee. we've also seen that it doesn't take much to make her compromise her positions

Conversely, we've seen Bernie in two elections now. He's lost one and based on the upcoming states, he looks very likely to lose another. So he doesn't necessarily have a winning formula himself

Not the first time Warren's had to leave a race.

Oof.

That whole thing has been understated to be honest, really quite reprehensible that she got herself special placements etc based on a fundamentally false account of her heritage.

Claudius wrote:

Conversely, we've seen Bernie in two elections now. He's lost one and based on the upcoming states, he looks very likely to lose another. So he doesn't necessarily have a winning formula himself

No argument there. We'll never know what the last 4 years would look like had warren shown the gumption to compete with clinton in 2016 like bernie asked her to. arguably another mark against her, and to me, hints at what will be her strategic attitude towards handing out any 2020 endorsements

Its’s telling that she didn’t immediately announce an endorsement. I suspect ideologically she sympathizes with Bernie more than Biden. Her track record shows that. But she also has deeper networks within the party and might see logic in letting the race run its course with Biden destined to win. That also opens up potential senior government roles for her.

As for question of where Warren support will go, I’ve looked in a couple of places. The newspapers like Washington post are inconclusive, but Morning Consult has Warren second choices as 35-25% for Bernie over Biden. Its 2/3 mix versus the typical 100% myth purported by Sanders advocates. If we redid the maths for Super Tuesday, it would help Bernie but not by a whole lot. For the next set of contests, that ratio might be narrowed further by the perception that Biden is the favorite.

[Twitter]

Ain't no endorsement coming from her. She's gone full HRC with the tut-tutting about internet trolls. This is the shitty part of politics when someone as fundamentally decent as sanders just gets cheapshotted by hypocrites from all angles.

She was never in it for the issues. She's just like the rest of them. I wouldn't have voted for her in a million years if she'd come through our political system; indeed I would have discouraged people from doing so. She's so far beneath any acceptable standard that I demand from a politician and a human being.

Burnwinter wrote:

Oof.

That whole thing has been understated to be honest, really quite reprehensible that she got herself special placements etc based on a fundamentally false account of her heritage.

I follow a couple tribal scholars on twitter and there's great frustration among them over how liberal media doesn't talk to them, doesn't even talk about them, it's all been hushed up. No adequate apology from Warren, no dialogue. It follows a consistent line where they are made invisible to everyone except when people want to score political points off them. When Warren published that DNA test which showed homeopathic levels of ancestry every shithouse liberal was: "Gotcha Trump!" They never understood the issue or the damage their behaviour did to indigenous communities. Tribeswomen and men had told her for decades before she ever took that test to stop claiming native identity, that it's not just a question of blood. She never listened.

Since the day she began her campaign native american journalists have been triyng to raise awareness about how they feel about having a presidential candidate behaving like this, and they've been relentlessly attacked by - mostly white - Warren supporters for it. You'd think there was a bigger story in there than in the Bernie voters who were telling Michael Bloomberg to eat shit.

Klaus wrote:

Burnwinter wrote:

Oof.

That whole thing has been understated to be honest, really quite reprehensible that she got herself special placements etc based on a fundamentally false account of her heritage.

I follow a couple tribal scholars on twitter and there's great frustration among them over how liberal media doesn't talk to them, doesn't even talk about them, it's all been hushed up. No adequate apology from Warren, no dialogue. It follows a consistent line where they are made invisible to everyone except when people want to score political points off them. When Warren published that DNA test which showed homeopathic levels of ancestry every shithouse liberal was: "Gotcha Trump!" They never understood the issue or the damage their behaviour did to indigenous communities. Tribeswomen and men had told her for decades before she ever took that test to stop claiming native identity, that it's not just a question of blood. She never listened.

Yup. There's also a general issue about "one drop of blood" logic in white hands, it's part of the eliminationist settler-colonial tradition to deny indigeneity when people have mixed ancestry, so it becomes even more troubling when people who are settlers try to reverse that to claim special privileges or appropriate indigenous culture based on one (imaginary or otherwise) ancestor.

We have the same problems for the same underlying reasons here with rural landowners or righteous academics who have mysterious "Aboriginal ancestors" ... whether or not they're right, they're usually trying to occupy both sides of the fence, implicitly gaining from white privilege at the same time as delegitimising the claims of those who can't with their protean Aboriginal identities that aren't linked to any community or country.

There are a lot more layers to it than that, don't want to flatten out the issue unnecessarily. If anyone's got a few spare hours I highly recommend Patrick Wolfe's book TRACES OF HISTORY, which compares different racist dynamics in the USA and Australia.

The business with Warren may have more context than I understand, but to me it seems like a serious failure of character.

MSNBC’s Brian Williams & NYT Editorial Board Member Mara Gay....

Claudius wrote:

Trump should not be a standard for anything. Even pigs would shun a trough he’d been in.

It's a genuine question. I read this thread with interest as I don't know a lot about American politics. 

So i'm interested as to why this is seen as a negative for Sanders, and something he needs to learn from, whereas it worked for Trump?

JazzG wrote:

MSNBC’s Brian Williams & NYT Editorial Board Member Mara Gay....

Sweet Jesus.  NYT is embarrassing these days

Tam wrote:

Claudius wrote:

Trump should not be a standard for anything. Even pigs would shun a trough he’d been in.

It's a genuine question. I read this thread with interest as I don't know a lot about American politics. 

So i'm interested as to why this is seen as a negative for Sanders, and something he needs to learn from, whereas it worked for Trump?

Burnsy put it succinctly a few pages back. If you're going the populist route, you need to be uncompromisingly outside the political establishment and appear to be unstoppable. It worked for trump because he had  never run for office and was willing to risk burning every republican bridge and throwing all decency and decourm into the bushes. And in spite of that, he kept winning. Its not a master strategy,  and lets not forget he only just barely won the electoral college against a very unpopular opponent in HRC. Bernie is a career politician and despite being anti-establishment, still has relationships in the party built over many years. he's always stopped short of completely throwing the DNC under the bus

Look, it’s a very good question. I don’t think I have a perfect answer but I will try.

Why Trump works.
We know that Trump has managed to excite and consolidate white voters who trust in his nationalistic ideas. Recent research also points towards a clustering of white voters on the right with large similarities in beliefs/interests on nationalism, evangelicalism, and other issues like guns, abortion and economic principles. They’re also informed by similar news souecss so easy to control information flow to them. From a government standpoint, once Trump was in power, the senators and congressmen have sought to use him to protect current and future interests like judges, taxes, etc. They can ride their consolidated base to ride our election victories in swing states with a minority of votes.

Democrats, on the other hand, are more diverse. AOC has said that in another country she and Biden wouldn’t be in same party. I mentioned that this is a party that includes black social conservatives. It also includes folks who are liberal on both social and economic issues. It’s in effect 2 or 3 European parties. So while Sanders has great ideas, he still has to master how to sell them to this diverse coalition so people feel included and accept him as the new power center. I think that includes steps like

• being willing to make some concessions on M4A if necessary. The end goal is coverage for all Americans. Work with others toward the goal
• do not be as dogmatic. Eg this week made clear VP candidate will be an M4A supporter. A VP is a great way to build your coalition. Instead he’s using it to further create an us versus them division which doesn’t work in a diverse coalition.

There is also an interesting aspect of vocal minority of Sanders supporters. I hear a lot of sexist rhetoric towards Clinton and Warren which is not dissimilar to Trump, Obama, Biden, Buttigieg supporters etc have not had similar use of language like snake, crooked, etc., when discussing these women. It’s well researched that women politicians have a higher trust hurdle, but it’s interesting to see how they’re portrayed indifferent spheres.

You keep repeating the Bernie bros point. Why does it matter? Nobody cares that Warren's supporters actively attack native Americans as Klaus pointed out earlier. Nobody cares that Bidens base literally would support Trump over Sanders but the latter is taken into sippenhaft for some teenagers posting stuff online

American politics are so farcical it takes the piss. Electability depends on what people post online anonymously. Politicians can drop out of the race and endorse someone else the same fucking day and large parts of their support actually follow their recommendation instead of making up their own mind. And the biggest newspaper and channel in the country can't count for shit

I wonder will Biden debate Bernie one on one now.

I hope they do.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/276932/several-issues-tie-important-2020-election.aspx
As per Gallup above, amongst Democrats' base: healthcare, climate, education, guns, and inequality are the most important topics.
Why not have a debate where each of those topics are given 15 minutes. Have NPR moderators who care about probing the topics (not a meme-able highlight of people bickering). Let each man have 2-3 minutes to lay out his policy position clearly. He can read a statement if he wants. And then they can have a chat with the expert moderator. I would kill for that.

Qwiss! wrote:

I wonder will Biden debate Bernie one on one now.

I think there's a debate scheduled after the next round of primaries. By then the odds are biden will have run up the score and any debate at that point would be virtually academic. Imo if biden dominates the next round of primaries there will be a huge wave of pressure for bernie to drop out before that debate. It would probably only serve as a highlight reel of gaffes for the trump campaign to use

There was a moment in an interview with Rachel maddow where bernie flat out said if biden gets a plurality he should be the nominee, and he would support him. Now that joe is the frontrunner the plurality will become sacred all of a sudden. There was a huge opportunity for bernie to take a dump on every other candidate who barely a week ago said they were against giving the nomination to whoever had plurality, but he sometimes plays too nice with these people

Gazza M wrote:

Imo if biden dominates the next round of primaries there will be a huge wave of pressure for bernie to drop out before that debate. It would probably only serve as a highlight reel of gaffes for the trump campaign to use

Wouldn't put it past Them.

"Your candidate is making our bad candidate look bad."

Re: why what worked for Trump won't work for Sanders ... left and right populism are not the same.

Right wing populism is chaos linked by reactionary sentiment, that's why it can unite Christians, libertarians and nativists, as well as people who just want to slam the handbrake on and believe illogical things like that it's possible to reverse economic globalisation. It doesn't have to create anything or imagine anything, the things it thinks about are in the historical record.

There's an element of reaction in the broad left, lots of desire to return to a Fordist style social covenant that's never coming back in the US, but ultimately a popular left movement is about creating new institutions and doing difficult things. It requires trust and is harder to build, and you can't do it using unpredictable though charismatic megalomania in the Trump or Berlusconi vein.

We need a Green New Deal (even if I don't like that form of words) quite desperately in Australia, but our politicians are venal party mannequins, and there isn't a decent one on our Labor frontbench.

Get in the game, Burnsy. Run for office.

y va marquer wrote:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
@AOC

Today is a hard day for so many people who love and respect @ewarren and admire her campaign - and I include myself in that. Elizabeth Warren is a progressive lion, a champion for working families, and her commitment to inclusivity is exemplary. Thank you for being a role model.

Thank you.

Burnwinter wrote:

^^

That's how you include people.

Lets see what she says if Biden wins....

Hopefully that it's a travesty of the corporate rigging of our democracy.

Yep, mara gay was one of the board members that was part of the NYT endorsement process. Bernie went into the interview and shat on the NYT right to their face, probably knowing that there was no way on gods green earth they'd endorse him no matter what he said. she looked pretty alarmed throughout. I found it quite amusing

At this stage if Kate McKinnon is playing you on SNL you've already lost and should drop out.

People are so pathetic.