TheLeviathan

Clinton absolutely had a message. Now you're showing your own bias. I'm not saying Trump wasn't worse as a person (he clearly was. He's awful), I'm saying what he was worse about was something his voters didn't care about. How many of those Sanders voters stay when they find out they get a sizable tax increase? According to polling, the support collapses quickly and precipitously. As it has, historically, for all far left candidates. While your speculation may be right, there is a significantly more sizable set of evidence that it's pretty delusional. The Slate articles above, hardly anti-Bernie as a site, lay it out pretty well.

The last paragraph is not just opinion though. He has stated to be an atheist. His plans did call for a tax increase on all people - including the middle class - to pay for it. He did attempt to dump toxic waste in poor Texas towns. He has been an active socialist throughout his life. The only thing that isn't a fact is that he's anti-American. I believe he's the opposite. But things he's done and said? Way easier to spin as anti-American than a damn email server. And they did that. Chanting "die yankee!" - you don't have to try very hard on that front. How many Trump voters are flipping for that?

The same guy who assaults women kept saying "email server" and turned that into a thing. I agree that Clinton was a terrible candidate to run against Trump. The Left needed Biden or Obama, a centrist with personality and down-to-earth qualities who didn't appear to be a stiff. Biden was the real key for the Dems. Sanders? Never would've survived being anti-American, socialist, athiest, dumps pollution on poor hispanics, and plans to raise everyone's taxes. No one could. That's a host of unelectable qualities all rolled into one dude.

No one was really understanding the Trump issue the entire way up to election night. So that's sort of meaningless. You didn't have to turn Clinton voters into Trump voters. You have to argue that Sanders would have retained all of Clinton's support plus switched people over from Trump. How much of the minority vote would Sanders have maintained given his total inability to generate it in the primaries? Now throw in the fact that two of the prominent minority voting blocs (Hispanic and Black) are strongly religious...how does atheist play? Now you also have reams of evidence about him saying things that are anti-American. How does that play with centrists or Rust Belt voters? And now, most of all, you have to tell people that you will raise their taxes. Everyone. Every....single...person. Something Slate's polling puts at having 15-17% support when given the details. At some point, when do you give up the ghost?

http://www.newsweek.com/myths-cost-democrats-presidential-election-521044 Kurt Eichenwald has some pretty robust credentials. And the larger point he and Slate make is one often overlooked: Clinton never attacked Sanders. She didn't want to risk losing the support of his voters, but did so anyway to large degrees. I get why people on the left (especially the farther left you go) want to believe that Sanders was the winning ticket. It means your brand of politics just needs the limelight and you'll win. That your ideas are mainstream enough to win. But that really is a delusion. It hasn't been earned yet and may be a long road to do so.

Everything non-Punisher and non-Cottomouth stunk about those shows. And that was a sizable portion of both. I'll give it a shot, Marvel has earned that much, but the luster of this group of shows has worn off a bit for me personally. Now....bring Fisk back into a prominent role and you might turn me around 180.

Noted lefty news site Slate sort of makes my point for me. Pretty forcefully too. There's some stuff in there about polling his policies and the costs that are eye popping.

Why wouldn't I hold the electorate in low regard?

Seriously? For one, polling is clear that the majority of Americans distrust/dislike atheists. Moreso than anything else, even illegal immigrants and Muslims. So the atmosphere to use it is a fact, it's there. Throw on top of that, the fact that Bernie has basically publicly stated the position and what is there left to sell? Trump doesn't have to be an Evangelist. He just has to be a non-atheist. And that's but one issue that could've been used to take Bernie down. It may not have even been necessary given some of the others.

I guess I would've liked to see better splits against lefties for this spot.

And I'd say you're strongly overlooking the evidence for how effectively a well-sold, dumb distraction can influence a campaign. I mean, a god damn email server vs. being an atheist? Which is the harder sell? People seem to have taken the Dem campaign for the nomination as an accurate representation of what Bernie would face in terms of opposition. Clinton played with the kid gloves and won 55-43. The Republicans don't even own kid gloves.

Yeah, that ought to not be the case, but circling back to Emmanuel's advice, we need to start looking at the way things are and not the way we want them to be. You don't win playing in some idealized world of how things "should" be. It's just a simple fact that the vast majority of Americans are uncomfortable with atheism.

I tend to agree. I think "Bernie Sanders: Atheist" alone would've been enough to lose him that election. And it's both true and an easy sell.

I'm pretty certain of it. Let's just look at a litany of things that Sanders had going against him over and above Clinton: 1) Sanders struggled (mightily by comparison) to generate any enthusiasm among minority voters relative to Clinton and she struggled in the general. And those struggles may have been especially key in the swing states. 2) Sanders was an even more ardent tax and spend liberal. Candidates as liberal as Sanders (Dukakis, Mondale, McGovern, etc.) have always been trounced. Centrist Dems have been far more successful in the general because they attract centrist voters. There is a reason those kinds of far left candidates have been smoked in the past. 3) One of the opposition bits of research was a fictitious essay Sanders wrote about a woman enjoying being raped. Do I need to elaborate on that? 4) Bernie was unemployed until his mid 30s. Clinton had a long record of public service. Again, do I need to write that narrative, it feels like I don't. 5) He marched in "Die Yankee" parades. Clinton had a long public service record and they made an email server make her look anti-American. Sanders "Yankees will die"? Almost too easy. 6) He's a Jewish socialist athiest. You know what's even more unpopular than Muslims? Athiests. You know who liberals struggle to be excited to support? Jews. And again....need "socialist" be explained further? I guess I could go on. I'd love to see the rest of the opposition file the Republicans had, we only know some of the snippets above that leaked. It's pretty pie in the sky to think he'd do something like win the Presidency.

Do we really still want to cite pre-election polls? He wouldn't have lost the Latino vote, but he may have lost Latino voters. Remember, pre-election, when everyone said Hillary would dominate the women and latino vote? How'd that turn out? Now get him to look like some coastal liberal elitist who talks about pollution but is more than willing to dump his on poor hispanics. That narrative writes itself.

Well that's a tad sobering.

I would encourage you to look at the opposition research. That dirt worked with Trump because he was teflon, he embraced the craziness. You start dragging up documents about Sanders dumping nuclear waste in poor hispanic towns? It's over. Sanders can't (and won't) embrace that. It makes him a fraud. All the "dirt" on Trump only reinforced what people already believed, good or bad. I'm ok with running people more like Bernie than Hillary, but Bernie would have been smoked by Trump. Or just about any Republican, really.

I'm not particularly convinced I'm going to like The Defenders either. I've liked some of the parts building up so far, but Luke Cage and DD Season 2 were both a bit of a let down for me personally. (Well, at least everything in the second half of those seasons.)

I think the Dems knew Bernie Sanders would never win a national election. And he wouldn't have, not with what they would've dragged out on him. Clinton was the better candidate, but a combination of bad timing and poor campaign strategy doomed her.

Isn't that kind of what he's saying though? He wants to use tact to divide Republicans in much the same way they divide Dems. It's about knowing which issues to double down on and which ones to avoid. I felt like he's saying, "yes, we want to stand on the right side of history, but we have the power to change history if we care more about winning than about what we campaign on" So it's about prioritizing the tactics that win an election, not those that necessarily make you stand on the right side of history. I think there is some truth in that. Republicans tend to be more willing to do or say whatever it takes to get into office. And it's working for them.

(Sorry to derail the thread, but food is important, so enjoy the aside!) You should definitely go to Smoque. As should anyone else that goes to Chicago. Everything on their menu is ridiculously good. And the baked beans have huge hunks of meat in it that they scavenge from cooking the other meat. I can't recommend it enough.

Snob.....and yes, I meant Smoque. I like Portillos, but I don't gush about them either. I don't understand the appeal of a soggy roast beef sandwich. Just give me a couple Chicago Dogs or a greasy Gyro and I'm far happier.

Doctor Strange. And pretty much everything Chuck Norris ever did.

I really can't see that happening. I'm actually more afraid of the collective group of morons in the House than i am of Trump. Bannon is the embodiment of the growing, dominant ideas of the House. That's the real menace. Trump is just the dumb shill being used to execute the plans.

So they think we'll be ok and our division will be terrible. Interesting.