Bay 12 Games Forum

I do think that the DNC probably deliberately or through inaction sabotaged Sanders, and it was totally a fuckup on their part.

Man, I think all I can really do is repeat that if what we've seen, or even a fair bit more, was enough to sabotage sanders he was a weaker candidate than I thought.

I think the resignation involved was a matter of a sacrificial lamb to not run off the Berners.

Nah, looked more like it was a salve for sanders specifically. Iirc it was already pretty obvious the berners (i.e. that last ~20% or so, iirc, of sanders supporters) were more or less lost causes so far as dem support goes. Not because of ideology or policy mismatch or anything (because for the Nth time, it's worth noting there wasn't much difference between the candidates besides rhetoric and political skill), but just because it wasn't sanders (or some other anti-establishment/socialist-in-at-least-title/whatever candidate, I guess) anymore. Sanders, on the other hand, was still being kinda' an egotistical little shit, and his shenanigans were actually causing problems (which was kneecapping his own stated goals, too, but hey, sanders is considered a fairly incompetent politician for a reason). So they tanked the optics hit and tossed folks out.

That's why I don't want Sanders to run again, he'll never get their full backing like an actual Democrat would, especially someone who isn't tainted with the stink of losing the last few primary or general elections, if only there was someone like that who could run in 2020.

Eh, the smell following around sanders that would prevent full democrat support is just... him. The whole years of antagonism thing, on top of his actions in this last election, particularly when he buggered off back to being independent (I guess it could still theoretically end up being like he claimed it would be, and he'll return to the DNC and actually be a democrat once his current term's done, but breath, holding, etc.). He put a fair bit of effort into showing he wasn't hopping on board in good faith.

Though I don't want him to win, personally, because at this point he's kinda' just proven himself a pretty bad political operator, however decent a demagogue or ideologue he is (and he's kinda' inflexible in a lot of ways as that, too, which ain't a point for if you're looking for one of those).

Thankfully it was denied.

Okay, so. Your identified sufficiently bad action here is... someone outside the DNC asking for dirt on sanders, and being denied. I mean, you said other stuff (which ah, as near as I can tell is somewhat inaccurate. Courtesy wasn't mentioned, it wasn't the DNC fellow turning around and looking for dirt or whatev', at least in that particular email). But that's what happened.

The second was indeed due to an op-ed story covering the DNC favoritism of Clinton, specifically concerning her " victory fund", which was alledged to come from misappropriation of funds for other democrats running, such as for the house and senate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Victory_Fund

This was an action taken by the DNC on behalf of Clinton that they got called on. They then further did damage control to discredit the malfeasance, and make Clinton look good.

And here, yes, the problem you're pointing to is the DNC drafting a piece refuting claims made against it, on behalf of the DNC. And you're pointing to this as substantial evidence the DNC violated an ethos of impartiality against the sanders campaign, apparently not even because of the small possibility of collusion. Your point is that writing up a defense piece, that also makes clinton look better (because, y'know, the oppo piece linked the two and there ain't no just making things look better for one in that situation), for the organization points to a sustained and substantial campaign to sabotage bernie's primary run. If stuff like this was what killed it it was already deader than a doornail (but it wasn't, and, as near as I'm able to tell, still, it didn't), y'know?

I get what you're trying to say, wierd, what you're presenting as evidence and whatnot. I just don't get how your getting your conclusions from it, or ascribing the degree of severity you seem to be. I said actions matter, yeah. Then I mentioned sabotage. The stuff above? That ain't sabotage. It might be equivalent to a cruel remark or a bit of disruption, but that in particular ain't sign of much else. If there was some kind of huge and insistently repeating pattern of stuff like that then yeh might have had something, but all those email leaks seemed to manage was a small handful of slightly (and often dubiously) inappropriate communications. Oddly enough, it might not have taken malfeasance for bernie to lose the primary. Sanders wasn't actually appealing to all the primary voters.

Still, look. You were asking how the media was to be blamed for some of the campaign troubles, I do believe. Discussion was going on about that, anyway, totes possible I'm misattributing that specifically to you and apologies if so, but that was the context of the original bit. You see this stuff you've presented as smoking guns? These are barely worth noticing and at worst asking someone to step down for. They are non-evidence of anything actually meaningful happening. This is how the media is to blame for some (quite a lot, really) of the campaign troubles. Particularly for clinton, the theme for this last year in the media was taking small things, plastering them across everything, and steadily repeating they were big things until people actually believed it or at least heard it enough to be doubtful. Usually then making spurious connections to all sorts of other crap where connections didn't exist and getting people to do the same thing with that, too. FTFE.

This argument of who to blame is completely and utterly missing the goddamn point of this whole fucking thing that I wonder if there's even going to be a Democratic party left by 2020.

Eh, trying to figure out what went off course is a pretty necessary for getting back on it, yeah? Way back now but eh.

Or they could just be impartial, you know? Seems like an easy solution - don't mess with the democratic process. Done.

And done? For all there wasn't a neutral opinion inside the DNC (and it would have been really difficult for there to be, considering their previous history with bernie, to say nothing of what came after), by all appearances I've actually been able to see they didn't actually mess with the process. Any bylaw violations that have been noticed are minor, and so far as I'm aware anything major just didn't happen. If the primaries were stolen from sanders, I'm apparently incapable of seeing and remembering the evidence for it, because everything I've actually seen, read, and so on, just... doesn't point to that. Lots of people trying to say it does and throwing scrap at the statement to try to get it to be substantial, but nothing really there. At most it pointed to some folks inside the DNC not quite liking sanders, and some of them doing stuff that wasn't 100% appropriate but was also very, very normal for the kinds of workplaces and whatnot these things are. But he got his fair shake, and didn't win because the primary voters just didn't want him to be the candidate. DNC was fair, near as I can tell. Its staffers weren't soulless automatons, but impartial seems to be what they managed.

they meant that the 8 suicides were unsubstantiated, sweetheart <3

Ah, fair enough. It'll make me feel better if they still are in a day or two, heh.

... that's a weird statement, though, SL. Last time I was substantially active I dropped a good 20, 25 lbs, and my diet didn't change much at all. And I wasn't explicitly exercising or anything, just moving around a lot more. And, uh. Other than the fluctuations when I'm in a particularly busy part of my life, I've weighed about the same since I was like 12. So, at least from my experience, increased activity alone is pretty good for at least some weight loss.

And yeah, so far as exercise goes giving some kind of goal or something to actually do tends to help a lot. Even just having it be kinda' fun helps, as kids and jungle gyms and whatnot display readily.

Don't ask me how autocorrect did that. I don't know and don't want to.

Because FTFE isp. FTFE.

when the party expecting those votes does not represent those voters interests, and documentation proving that comes tto light, you blame the messenger?!

You know, weird, there were more interests involved than "elect sanders". Both for the folks that supported him and the ones that supported other people. The media fuckup is that they focused on basically one or two interests, in exclusion to just about everything else, and did their damnedest to push that monofocus onto the people they were marketing towards. You blame the messenger because they're the ones that somehow managed to push this narrative that because the DNC didn't suck bernie off even behind the scenes, where they have a long history of opposition with sanders and while he was pretty much screwing the party itself, they were ignoring everyone that supported him. Never mind he did get support from them while he was running, despite them having less than zero reason to actually throw that kind of support behind a hostile independent. Never mind that so far as actually enacted procedure goes, he was treated pretty much the exact same as clinton or any other candidate would be. Never mind that clinton actually did slide towards sanders on some things, and was already there with just about everything else. None of it matters. Behind the scenes communication matters more than actual action. All the other interests that were listened to instead of "elected sanders" didn't matter. That's how things rolled out.

Instead of voter suppression, why don't the Republicans try to appeal to those that have been driven towards the Democrats? All voter suppression does is make their base smaller.

Enough burnt bridges the suppression is less effort, if I had to make a guess. Last while (years) the GOP hasn't been so much setting fire to bridges when it comes to those demographics as setting up a gigantic WP sprinkler in the middle of town and letting it loose. Like, they could try to appeal but they've been setting most possibilities of that on fire for most folks' lifetime.

And no, ree, no one sensible is saying it's all of it. Just that it's there and has more of an effect than it should. Which is, y'know. Backed by court judgements and effects of identified measures on turnout and whatnot.

There's been at least 8, TA, apparently.

And sho, the stuff about supporting conversion therapy's pretty substantiated, last I checked (i.e. about a minute ago). Probably worded something wrong, but there's no question that the practice itself, which he advocated for to whatever degree, is what it is, or that he's been willing to speak for allowing it. He's slime, so yeah, he hasn't actually gone out and yelled zap the gays or somethin', but any support for that shit is too far. Even if you're trying to worm your way out of admitting support for the most egregious parts of the practice (such as the electroshock stuff), it's still something that has been regularly shown to severely fuck up the people that it's inflicted on. There ain't much mitigation you can do when it comes to how bad the practice is.

Till he actually comes out on camera rejecting the practice outright, m'not particularly inclined to giving him slack, m'self.

And if they say, to pick a relevant example, that they want you to crack down on illegal immigration? That they want to build a wall on the southern border?

How is building a wall a concern? It's a possible response to one, sure, but not more than that. Though I guess that's in relation to the whole immigration thing, in which case note previous comments about reality. I've noted how the response to that goes -- by and large we're not going to say something that won't actually do what they want it to do, is going to do what they want it to do. We apparently make the mistake of not lying to people.

And we already hammer undocumented immigration, for all we're not going to go full gestapo on it (because, again, no, we're not going to screw over fellow americans for this, and don't need to). It's not ignored, obama's not somehow ended deportation efforts and the dems have no intention of changing that, and for all there's been talks of amnesty and whatnot to get some shit sorted out and under control -- which would be something that would actually improve the situation, mind -- open borders and all that crap are just outright lies. We've been working on undocumented immigration. It was blatant that dems intended to continue doing so. We didn't lie to the people about the realities of what that entailed or how we were going to go about it, but it was happening. But apparently that's not addressing concerns. Neither was integration efforts, work to make the immigration system sane and functional, everything that would work towards addressing the problems involved with that sort of immigration or what was causing the concern in the first place.

But hell, yes, there's going to be some concerns that don't get a very satisfactory response, and substantially more proposed solutions that are rejected, either because a satisfactory response just doesn't exist or are the response, satisfactory or not, is so against the party's spirit that they're just not really an option. Which is why there's not a single effort, monofocused on one method, and why the democratic platform isn't actually single issue, but trying to address a whole hell of a lot of things.

Donald Trump gave some people hope, for the first time in a long time, that their concerns would be not only heard but acted upon. Whether he'll live up to it or not is something we'll have to wait and see.

Trump lied to people, repeatedly. Told them that their concerns could be fixed with shit that can't fix it. That was the hope you're talking about. Yeah, it worked, apparently, and better than the pile of stuff that's actually been acting on their concerns. But the answer you're giving me is that we need to lie to the people, give them false hope, and take power with empty, impossible, or ineffective, promises. It's what the people want, it seems. Only answer these disaffected, apparently ignored, folks, are going to accept.

... really, I guess what I have to ask is what you see as addressing their concerns. Are you actually talking about talking to them, working out a way to do something about their problems and not screw other things over, or what? Because that's what is being done. I know the media says sod all about it and the populations being referred to barely notice it, but it's what's happening. That's what leads to all the bloody local initiatives that have been crawling across this country for the last long while. It's what leads to trying to attack the problems that are causing folks grief from multiple directions to see what sticks. It's what has been causing the left in this country to actually do shit instead of say they will and then kneecap efforts to the moment someone turns their back.

S'just. Maybe you can answer the question, since you seem to be implying you're closer to understanding these folks and if anyone else actually tried to so far I missed it. If literal decades of effort to address someone's concerns, effort that has actually seen results, if not magical ones, is not seen as addressing someone's concerns, what the hell are you supposed to do? Is their anything besides what Trump has shown us works, which is throw impossibilities and lies at them until something sticks?

Max: The lesson I was referring to learning was that perhaps they should focus on a candidate's policies, experience and character rather than trotting out the same tired 'Look! It's a woman/black/hispanic! Super progressive!' talking points. Identity politics are cancerous, and if the first thing to be said about your new prospective candidate is about her gender and race then it already feels like nothing that matters will really change.

Though seriously, this just keeps driving me up the wall. Do you really think that clinton didn't focus on experience, policies, and character? Because vast swaths of what she said this campaign was that. Huge amounts of what actually came out of the DNC, was that. And massive amounts of what was aimed at trump, was that. As massively screwed up as it is for it to be true, this POTUS campaign was more focused on policy, experience, and character, than just about any in recent history. Now, the media? Yeah, that wasn't what the media did _{fuck the forth estate, seriously}. But the lesson you're saying needs to be learned is the lesson that was being read from this entire campaign.