The Pitters' Place

Thousands of leaked e-mails proving the DNC conspired against Sanders to sabotage his campaign and he still does nothing but issue some weak statement about how the resignation of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz is the right thing. Then Clinton hires Debbie Wasserman Schultz to work on her campaign. Sanders still endorses Clinton. What The Fuck? The same people who still can't get over George W. Bush winning Florida in 2000 will completely ignore the fact that Clinton cheated her way to "victory" throughout the country.

What's interesting to me is how everyone is saying this is a plot by Putin to interfere with our elections and tilt things towards Trump. Is there any actual hard evidence behind that, or is it just conspiracy-mongering?

Edit: And yes I am pointing to the hypocrisy of Hillary people deriding Bernie fans who've been saying the DNC has been conspiring against him with "CONSPIRACY THEORIST TINFOIL!" even though there's been months of solid evidence for it while just swallowing up the idea that this leak is all a nefarious conspiracy by Putin with absolutely no hard evidence for it that I've seen so far.

Even if Russian hackers are the ones who released the e-mails, that does not alter the fact that the e-mails are real. "How dare someone else try to interfere and cheat the system against us after we already went to so much trouble to cheat the system in our favor!"

A more blatant display of handwaving and deflection I haven't seen in a while.

It's a good thing I lost every single ounce of faith in the political system a very long time ago, otherwise I might actually feel something from all this.

I was actually pretty bummed he actually endorsed her. I didn't agree with most of Bernie's politics, but IMO he seemed like a genuinely good human being.

But when you run a campaign based on being anti-establishment, anti-big bank, anti-corporation, and anti-war and then turn around and endorse the one person who is the epitome of all those, sorry but your integrity and respectability takes a big, BIG hit in my book.

The alternative is Trump, though...

Bernie said he would endorse Hillary from the beginning, though.

Yeah, but to still endorse her after this is just too much.

It never seemed clear to me that Bernie had all that much integrity to begin with, looking at his record (as you know), so it's still not a surprise to me.

My theory was that Bernie always meant to function as a sheepdog for the Democrats. His purpose was to corral leftists disillusioned with the Democratic Party and Hillary in particular back into the fold by establishing a base and finally folding when the script called for it. The Democrats trot these people out almost every election cycle. If he had any integrity he would have run as an independent and established a real electoral alternative to the two oligarchic parties which have our country in a stranglehold. The Democrats are a corporatist party run by and for the financial elites; he sold out the moment he joined their ticket.

I've heard a version of that which states that the only reason he ran was to take away any potential momentum from genuine minor parties like the Libertarians and Greens. The only problem is this idea comes from the same people who seriously believe that the Clintons paid Trump to run as a Republican and then intentionally lose in the general election. The main point of this seems to be that Hillary was worried she was unpopular enough that the Libertarian and/or Green Party candidates might have actually been able to do something third parties rarely do by winning a few states and prevent either major party from winning a majority of electoral votes. Then the election would go to the House of Representatives where a Republican majority would guarantee a Republican victory. With Sanders running as a Democrat, people that would otherwise support the minor parties would be fooled into believing they had their candidate and forget about the minor parties altogether. So yeah, both Sanders and Trump only serve the function of assuring a Clinton victory. The day after the election, all three will be laughing together about how they stole the election from the gullible public.

If Clinton planted both Bernie Sanders and Trump to assure her the Presidency, then I'm pretty sure she deserves the Presidency after all that.

Derived Absurdity wrote:It never seemed clear to me that Bernie had all that much integrity to begin with, looking at his record (as you know), so it's still not a surprise to me.

My theory was that Bernie always meant to function as a sheepdog for the Democrats. His purpose was to corral leftists disillusioned with the Democratic Party and Hillary in particular back into the fold by establishing a base and finally folding when the script called for it. The Democrats trot these people out almost every election cycle. If he had any integrity he would have run as an independent and established a real electoral alternative to the two oligarchic parties which have our country in a stranglehold. The Democrats are a corporatist party run by and for the financial elites; he sold out the moment he joined their ticket.

That's a little too much of a conspiracy theory for me to believe. First, Bernie would have dropped out long before he did had he just tried to rev up the Democratic base. Instead, he helped foster a lot of anti-Clinton and anti-DNC animosity, particularly late in the campaign when he would winding down in this hypothetical. And if this were true, I suspect the hacked emails would have shown some form of collusion. Rather, you can see many at the DNC had their own animosity towards Bernie, particularly toward the end of the primary.

I don't think Bernie was doing it on purpose. At least not when he actually started winning. I think he may have convinced himself at some point down the road that he could actually win when he started going much further than anyone (including his campaign) expected him to go, so he started really trying. At the beginning everyone expected him to get no more than 10% of the vote. He may have started off as a sheepdog (despite being an independent he's always been extremely loyal to the Democrats), but changed his mind.

But he's still functioning as a sheepdog right now by endorsing Clinton, whether he means to or not.

It's not a conspiracy. It's just basic politicking. There's always a Bernie Sanders every election; he just happened to get really far this time. If Bernie Sanders didn't exist the Democratic Party would have to invent him.

Except Bernie was never a Dem, and has tried to use that to bolster his position. He was trying to get the Democratic party to move the left. I don't think he ran to try and get those on the far left to join the establishment, but to move the establishment to the left. He largely succeeded in that regard.

I know he was never a Dem. I said he's always been very loyal to the Dems. He's voted with them about 98% of the time.

Using an anti-establishment persona to bolster anti-establishment credentials and lure non-establishment voters in while eventually endorsing the establishment is exactly something a sheepdog would do.

He has not moved the establishment to the left. He's got some mildly progressive things on the party platform, which is entirely symbolic and non-binding and has absolutely zero influence on policy. The platform is always ignored.

Except your whole argument was that the Democrats "trot" people like Bernie out every election cycle, when there's really no evidence (and mostly counter evidence) that Bernie was a tool used by the DNC to foster excitement in the primaries. I suspect that, without Bernie, there would have been a lot less animosity towards Hillary than there is now.

As for Bernie not doing anything, I call bullshit. He pulled Hillary to the left on many issues now. Support for $15 minimum wage, TPP, tuition-free public universities, keystone pipeline, medicare expansion, arctic drilling, etc. She was also forced to go to the left of Bernie on some issues, such as gun control and a focus on racial inequality. Some suspected she would pivot to the center once the general campaign began, but she seems to have doubled-down on the more progressive policies.

Hilary doesn't believe any of that and she's going to betray the left the instant she gets in. Her pick of Tim Kaine is proof of that.

How was she forced to the left of Bernie on gun-control? Her position on that issue hasn't changed at all from what I've seen. She even made sure to shout Bernie down during the debates to try to prevent him from even having a chance to present his somewhat reasonable view.

Derived Absurdity wrote:Hilary doesn't believe any of that and she's going to betray the left the instant she gets in. Her pick of Tim Kaine is proof of that.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/tru ... -promises/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business ... story.html

CashRules wrote:How was she forced to the left of Bernie on gun-control? Her position on that issue hasn't changed at all from what I've seen. She even made sure to shout Bernie down during the debates to try to prevent him from even having a chance to present his somewhat reasonable view.

She was closer to Bernie's position on guns in 2008, while she tends to be more liberal now on the issue along with the rest of the Democratic party. You're probably right in that he didn't cause her to become more left on the issue, but she made gun control more of a major issue during the primaries because of him at the very least.