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evilelitest2 · 5 years

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I don't think it is surprising AOC (Ilhan and Rashida too, they either did or plan to) endorsed Bernie, I always figured it would be Warren or Bernie the only surprise for me is I didn't expect them to do it so soon.

Basically the Squad, but especially AOC have shown themselves to be extremely skill political navigators and have very effortlessly managed to maneuver through the Democratic Party Leadership, especially for a first time congresswoman with no prior political experience, the fact that she is the 4th to 5th most powerful Dem member of the house is extremely telling. Part of why she has been able to do this is that she, like Warren, takes Sanders rhetoric and reshapes it to be less threatening to a lot of Americans who are easily jumpy (you know the dumb ones) and while her twitter persona is extremley confrontational, apparently she is very easy to work with irl, which has allowed her to rally support without alienating the leadership. Which in terms of style is basically a younger less wonky version of Elizabeth Warren.

So I was wondering what they were going to do in terms of the Sanders Warren Debate, because obviously AOC is going to endorse one of them, but she basically had three options

1) Endorse Warren, who seems like the winning horse at the moment, and try to get in on her good side by playing the role of Kingmaker

2) Back Sanders and win the loyalty of that half of the progressive part of the Party

3) Endorse Neither and wait and see

She went with 2, which was oddly timed because it was right after Sander’s heart attack, which makes his odds of winning even more unlikely, but it makes sense. Because by doing this, she has likely saved Sander’s campaign, at least in the short term, because this endorsement will rally the left (especially coming from a POC woman) is a huge boost against Warren, so that will likely secure a lot of loyality. But if Warren wins anyways, I don’t know if she her any of her faction holds a grudge, most Warren people, myself included are like “ok her choice” and move on, its not seen as a betrayal, which some Sanders folks might if things were reversed. Its really only a bad idea for her if Biden or some other centrist wins as a result of Warren and Sanders battling more seriously, which has been my main worry this entire primary.

now what the AOC endorsement does not do is win the primary for Sanders, because Endorsements only really matter if they come from wings of the party that you are not. As 538 put it, if Joe Manchin had endorsed Sanders that would have been a big deal, because that is him signalling to his loyalists “this guy is actually cool” You don’t need endorsements to win, as Trump proved, but they can help despicably in a crowded primary.

It also might be a good idea because it signals to Warren not to pivot to the center, and keeps her leaning left, which we want.

So I think it made sense for AOC and the rest of the squad to do this and I don’t hold a grudge, my only worry is that it signals more serious fighting between Warren and Sanders, and this bothers me because what ever way you slice it, the progressive win of the Democratic Party only makes up about 30% at most. The majority of democrats don’t iddentify as progressive, let along socialist, and have much more centrist attitudes towards a lot of policies, this has actually increased since a lot of former republicans have deserted trump in Suberbia are now democrats. In 2016, we had a 2 way race between an extremely unpopular political figure running a very bad campaign while in the midst of an email scandal. And despite that, Clinton won, because if the establishment unifies, the progressive can’t win yet (see also 2004). Trump however was able to win the Republican side because his opposition had divided themselves 15 ways. Which is sort of an opportunity for us here, except rather than shelling racist xenophobia conspiracy theories we are trying to promote...like healthcare and stuff. Biden isn’t a super strong candidate but he has effectively prevented a more saavy centrist from grabbing the spotlight, and has left the centrist side of things in a state of infighting. Mayor Pete, Biden, Beto, Bullock, Booker, Delaney Klobaucher and the other centrists* are fighting each other rather than unifying to fight us, and remember there are more of them than us. Now that Warren is tied with Biden, the fear I have is that she and Sanders will fight just as all the centrists will focus on her, leading to either Biden re surging, or somebody else taking their place and them unifying against us. We have an opportunity to get the most progressive candidate in office since either LBG or FDR depending on which element of progressive you measure, and I don’t want to blow this. 2016, Bernie winning was extremely unlikely, the goal was always to get the left strong and rallied for the post 2016 world. 2020, we have a real chance of winning this like....legit and finally ending the Reagan era of politics.

* The exception to this rule are Yang, WIlliamson, and Gabbard, who are sort of doing their own weird thing, and in the case of two of them, actively suck

P.S. I don’t think that the Squad isn’t “not being feminist” by supporting Sanders over Warren.

#Ask EvilElitest #2020 primary #2016 primary #Bernie Sanders #Elizabeth Warren #AOC #The Squad #Ilhan Omar #Rashida Tlaib #alexandria ocasio-cortez #DNC #Democratic Party

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bellboy905 · 4 years

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Even in a concerningly out-of-touch and inept party, Joe Biden stands out as uniquely out of touch and inept. It’s not just that he seems mentally not-that-with-it, but that he fundamentally can’t organize people. He certainly can’t inspire them. In fact, Biden’s political instincts are atrocious. He constantly told Iowa voters to “go vote for someone else,” and 85% of them did. He tells millennials he has “no empathy” for them. He promises no change. He is a serial liar who fabricates absurd details about his life story, like fictitious arrests and a history of civil rights activism.

[...]

Many wealthy and powerful Democrats will do whatever it takes to stop Bernie Sanders from being the nominee... If these Democrats succeed in stopping Bernie, perhaps through a contested convention in which superdelegates override the plurality vote, and they put the feeble and uninspiring Biden at the top of the ticket, it will be an absolute calamity.

[...]

Biden will have no clear message, no strategy. He will perform embarrassingly in debates with Trump, forgetting his words and seeming to wonder why he is even on the stage... Trump, being a bully, will seize his advantage and relentlessly mock Biden’s performance. Trump will (as he has before) talk a lot about how Sanders was “robbed” by a “rigged” primary, delegitimize Biden’s nomination, and stoke the intra-party conflict. Biden will look dazed and confused on election night, as Democrats wonder yet again how they managed to lose to Donald Trump of all people.

[...]

It’s so weird to me that people don’t get this. Do they really believe the idiotic attacks on Bernie’s “radicalism”? Look at Bernie’s agenda. A national health insurance plan, of the kind that exists successfully all over the world. A giant ambitious climate investment plan, of the kind that we absolutely need if we are going to save the earth because this is a f*cking emergency. A living wage that allows people to actually afford to pay their rent and feed themselves. What is the problem here? Why are people like Barack Obama and Beto O’Rourke prepared to destroy the Democratic Party and put the entire future of the planet at risk in order to stop this? What exactly is the threat that Bernie poses?

Even at his most ambitious, Sanders’ plans resemble things that exist today in many European countries... And the plans are obviously not going to be implemented in their most ambitious form. Everything gets watered down through the legislative process. Whatever changes Bernie could possibly bring about would be pretty modest and inadequate, and even Bernie skeptic Paul Krugman admits Bernie poses no threat to the economy. The Wall Street Journal, in its opinion section, treats Bernie as an insane socialist radical bent on turning America into Venezuela. But in its news section, where they have to tell business-owners the truth, they admit that the changes he would bring are modest, like making CEO pay more reasonable, making it easier to unionize, boosting the minimum wage, lowering drug prices, legalizing marijuana, letting farmers fix their own farm equipment, and letting post offices offer banking services.

[...]

Why do people suggest Medicare-for-All is fiscally irresponsible when it’s very clear that it will save people money and prevent tens of thousands of people from dying every year? Why, when Bernie has been on the right side of history [on] every issue from gay rights to the Iraq War, do people treat him as insane and lacking judgment? Why are people like Obama willing to risk destroying the party and imperiling the earth in order to keep this man from being president?

The charitable answer, and the one they would probably give themselves, is that... they simply do not think Bernie is “electable.” They think he would lose to Donald Trump, that because he is too “far left” he would be the equivalent of George McGovern in 1972, and would lose in a landslide. They think he would hurt the prospects of “down ballot” Democrats, with Democratic members of Congress in conservative districts being forced to share the ticket with a socialist. They will insist that it is not Bernie’s agenda that they despise. They simply believe he threatens the party. He must be stopped at all costs in order to save democracy.

[...]

Socialist values pose a significant threat to the wealth and power of certain people in society who have a strong self-interest in making sure people misunderstand and distrust socialists. But actually, the left stands for ideas that, once people understand them clearly and see through all the myths, have the possibility of mass appeal. Medicare-for-All is popular, and it would probably be far more popular if you explained to people exactly how it worked and what it would mean for them, and showed them how it would affect their pocketbooks and their experience with the healthcare system. Instead, pollsters ask things like “Would you support Medicare-for-All even if it took away your private insurance and increased your taxes?” and people get jittery, because they think that means they’re going to be uninsured and have less money. People try to mislead the public about what the left is trying to do, then when the public swallows the misconception, we are told that America rejects left ideas. It’s silly.

[...]

If the left were given the ability to make its case clearly to the public, to explain what it is we actually believe and want, our agenda would not be “crazy.” It’s only crazy because people keep calling it crazy and refusing to have a serious discussion about what, for example, AOC’s poverty plan would mean for people, or how much it would really cost to get rid of student debt (not nearly as much as you think). If Bernie is the nominee he will actually get a chance to speak to millions of people directly and at length for the first time. And when people get to see Bernie up close, rather than through the distorting prism of media coverage, they like him.

[...]

Perhaps Democrats trying to stop Bernie really think he can’t beat Trump... For some of them, however, there is something else. Bernie’s success would discredit and humiliate them. And whether they know it or not, that may be subconsciously affecting how they think about him.

[...]

My theory for why some people hate Bernie so much is that Bernie shows them a person they could have been, but found some excuse not to be. They didn’t have to sell out... but they did... and the only consolation they got was that it was the reassurance that they were pragmatic and sensible and smart.

#sanders #biden #trump

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ramrodd · 5 years

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Where were you on May 4, 1970?

On 4 May 1970, I wanted to get out of the Georgia sun and into some air conditioning before the starch in my summer khaki uniform wilted completely.

COMMENTARY:

I assume that you mean, where were you when you heard about Kent State?

My first visual memory that comes up is walking just south of the Post PX/Commisary cluster at Ft. Benning with the packet of my orders to Vietnam in my hand as I was clearing off post going to some office I had to present a copy of the orders to. The US Army has always depended heavily on personal initiative from the Seven Years War, going forward. It is still pretty much the frontier society it was the day George Custer dropped a letter to his wife off at the Quartermaster and trotted cheerfully off to glory. As a result of MacNamara, the Army community was beginning to lose some of this capacity that showed up for me on C-SPAN in the run-up to Desert Storm: the community was very sluggish. The Army noticed and began to fix that in 1994 just in time for the continuing decades of high cycle deployment the applied stupidity of Richard “Dick” Cheney and the neo-cons created with their historic and totally unnecessary diplomatic blunder compounded by their cosmic incompetence when they got us into Iraq and realized that the planning for occupation based on chocolates and flowers suffered from the basic operational assumptions inherent in “The Art of the Deal” and Duck Ass Don’s government shut down and tarriff wars.

But on 4 May, 1970, I was done with spring training as a Boy Soldier and the next step was the Big Leagues. I mean, you don’t go to Ranger School to run a Wall Street bucket shop and Vietnam was where the series was being played that year.

Kent State was not a surprise to me: it was an accident waiting to happen. The Nation Guard had been gunning down black folks since 1963 in places like Watts, Detroit and DC: the only difference this time is that it was white kids getting shot down and the reaction of the mostly white anti-war mob was, from my perspective, virtually the same as Roger Stone’s complaints about being arrested like your average black male who happens to be in the room when the FBI breaks down the door with the right address on the warrant but the wrong address afor the perp. I mean, they let him pull on some pants and polo shirt for his perp walk and he got about the same kind of coverage the times George Clooney got arrested for DUI or something. I mean, come on. But I digress.

I was in ROTC at Indiana University from the beginning of the drafts in 1965 until I graduated in the lull between Nixon’s election and Kent State. On my way to report to Infantry Hall, I picked up a couple going to the Atlanta Pop Festival on the 4th of July and I took them there and stayed unti almost dark and listened to a lot of music I didn’t recognize and drove to Atlanta for a shower and a little clubbing. The Atlanta Pop Festival was the first in a series of concerts leading to Woodstock. I was going through the Patrolling Committee training of Officer’s Basic that weekend and I didn’t really get the scope of the gathering, but it was like a migration celebrating what they believed was the end of the war because the Selective Service was shutting down and the All Volunteer Military coming on line. And, all in all, I think Woodstock is probably the one thing that has prevented assholes like Steve Bannon and Newt Gingrich from finally blowing up America like John Galt in Atlas Shrugged. If you were there and you remember the underlying moral statement being made by everybody being there (I think first of Joan Baez’s cover of Joe Hill soaring across the crowd and, today, I can see AOC guiding a generation of Secular Humanists into the tabula rasa of the 19th Amendment), I went to Vietnam for exactly those values.

I know why I went to Vietnam and I haven’t changed my mind. AOC validates my expectations and, before her, Barack Hussein Obama. On 4 May 1970, I was on my way to do my bit to make sure Obama got elected President. I wasn’t surprised about Kent State except in the timing, because I was surprised by the sheer brilliance of the Cambodian Incursion, after the fact, and by the sheer chutzpah of Nixon launching the operation at all.

As I say, I am an Army brat and I was raised around major headquarters all my life until I actually reported for duty. I knew about the Tet Offensive Christmas before the Tet Offensive. Ft. Monroe knew about the godless commie cocksuckers were going to spring something and it was clear to everyone that the holiday of Tet was the first pitch. My Professor of Military Science at IU didn’t know it was coming during the last class of the semester. I may have asked the question, how did he, a Major with at least two tours at the company level behind him, measure progress in Vietnam and his answer was the party line coming out of Saigon at the time, but it wasn’t informed of Saigon’s expectations in the next three weeks.

I was surprised by Cambodia because I was no longer hooked into that command level except when I was home. It was now literally above my pay grade. At the time, my first response was that it was a very gutsy move on Nixon’s part because the memo the Woodstock Nation was circulating. This was before the Oliver Stone version of Vietnam solidified around the mythology Ken Burns presents in Vietnam because it was still happening, but the first complaint about the incursion was that Nixon was widening the war and that establishes the boundaries of the emerging mythology. The common wisdom of the Woodstock Nation is that we invaded Vietnam in 1961 and 1961 in order to prop up French Colonialism. Noam Chomsky riffs of several versions of what happened in Vietnam in 1962 and he’s full of shit, lingusitically speaking.

Anyway, Nixon stole the march on the NVA in Cambodia and Laos and on the expectaions of the MSM and the Woodstock Nation and landed the sucker punch on the godless commie cocksuckers that let Nixon keep his promise to turn the war over to Saigon and to pull the troops out of the country without reprising either Dien Bien Phu or Dunkirk. The NVA was a world class military and Hanoi fanatical about siezing Saigon as a property of the People, etc, but the US military kicked ass and took names and kicked what was left to the curb and, when I got there in July, just after everybody got back from their road trip, there were 525,000 American soldiers in Vietnam and when I left in May 1971, there was less than 165,000. The Army knew what it was doing and Nixon let them do it. The Cambodian Incursion probably avoided 30,000 US casualties as a low ball estimate and the only cost the Woodstock Nation tallys is 4 dead in Ohio. They don’t even count Jackson State, because, after all, it’s a black university and the National Guard had been gunning down black folks in places like Watts and Detroit and DC since 1963 and they weren’t white boys and girls.

Do you see how I could turn this into a sermon about #BlackLivesMatter and why it was important for me to to go Vietnam to make sure Obama got elected? I mean, if I was wrong in 2008, I’ve been wrong since 4 May 1970. And, if I was wrong in 1970, I might as well pony up for a MAGA hat and go kiss Nick Sandman’s ass at half-time in the Super Bowl for ever suggesting his MAGA hat was hate speech.

So, anyway, my first real response, walking across post in the sub-tropical George sun at high noon, was not surprise that it happened but that it took so long for it to happen if it happened at all. After all, the only thing about the Chicago Police Riots in 68 that prevented it becoming a lethal blood bath like something out of the Russian Revolution or Ghadi’s peaceful resistance movement. I’ve had a chance to review what happened and I think the troops just wanted to frighten the crowd by putting some live rounds over their heads: the sizzle of volley fire can discourage a heavy investment in a “fuck you” attitude facing troops with fixed bayonets. And a couple of them didn’t fire quite high enough.

And here’s why I believe it was an accident: I could put myself in the place of that company commander. I wouldn’t have issued live ammo in the first place. If even weekend warriors can’t handle a crowd, defensively, with fixed bayonets, they need to transfer to the Air Force. That’s the first thing. They had secured the public property and why anybody felt a need to clear the meadow is a bit hazy to me. It’s like a high-speed car chase: you don’t really want to catch him so much as pen him in: let time work for you.

I wasn’t there. I don’t know, but from what I do know, that’s what I would have planned to do. The Kent State protests were not really structure but spontaneous, kids on their way to class up for a little heckling of the National Guard. There were professors there, talking the crowd down and outrage was going to drain away, nation wide, as the military operation completed its mission and returned from the thrust, no harm, no foul. And then these kids get shot and it mobilizes everything, all over again.

But it was an accident. If I had been the CO and determined that lethal force was the necessary action, I would have killed everything going up that hill side and anybody trying to get away at the top. Not 4 dead. 400.

In the numerology of the Bible, 4 is what’s left after the Finger of God touches down. There were 67 rounds fired up that hill at Kent State and, in my application of the numerology of the Bible, 67 reduces, first, to 13 and 13 is an ideogram that symbolizes the triune crown of Yaweh, Queen of Battle, with a lightening bolt above Her crown, the Finger of God. And, then, 13 devolves to 4.

From a military point of view, Kent State was an accident waiting to happen, but, as a Secular Humanist and Christian heretic, I have come to see divine purpose in the event.

But on 4 May 1970, I really just wanted to get out of the sun and into some air conditioning before the starch in my summer khaki uniform wilted completely.

And that’s the truth.

#transformingamericafirst

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itsfinancethings · 4 years

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President Donald Trump’s campaign geared up for a massive crowd at his Tulsa, Okla., rally on Saturday and things don’t seem to have turned out as planned. While many factors, including a recent spike in coronavirus cases within the state, might have actually led to the event’s sparse turnout, many suggest that young people could be behind the overstated hype.

Since the rally’s announcement on June 10, the campaign had promised a huge turnout. Trump’s campaign manager Brad Parscale tweeted last week that more than 1 million people had requested tickets for the event, which had initially been planned for Juneteenth and rescheduled after a swift backlash.

Anticipating an overflowing crowd, the campaign had even prepared a stage outside Tulsa’s BOK Center where the President could address supporters. President Donald Trump himself had said earlier in the week that he expected a “record-setting crowd” despite the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’ve never had an empty seat, and we certainly won’t in Oklahoma,” said Trump.

Trump just days ago: “We've never had an empty seat, and we certainly won't in Oklahoma."pic.twitter.com/H8IU2hrvCB https://t.co/SD7yixF9hM

— Will Steakin (@wsteaks) June 20, 2020

But ultimately, the turnout did not stand up to the campaign’s expectations. The outdoor events did not materialize, presumably as it became clear that there weren’t even enough supporters to fill all of the empty seats in the arena, let alone a sizable overflowing crowd. A Tulsa Fire Department spokesperson told Forbes that only 6,200 people attended the rally — less than half the venue’s 19,200 seating capacity.

After the rally, Parscale claimed that “radical protesters” had blocked Trump supporters from entering the venue. However, police officers on-site told the LA Times that the entryway had not been blocked for long, and that no one had been prevented from entering the space.

Although clear evidence does not yet exist for why the campaign’s expectations did not square with the lackluster attendance, some reports said that there might have been an unlikely culprit: an alliance of teenagers on TikTok and fans of Korean pop music.

After Parscale wrote on Twitter that protesters had interfered with the rally, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, (D-NY) interjected that teens had led the effort.

“Actually you just got ROCKED by teens on TikTok who flooded the Trump campaign w/ fake ticket reservations & tricked you into believing a million people wanted your white supremacist open mic enough to pack an arena during COVID Shout out to Zoomers. Y’all make me so proud,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote, adding that K-pop fans had contributed.

Actually you just got ROCKED by teens on TikTok who flooded the Trump campaign w/ fake ticket reservations & tricked you into believing a million people wanted your white supremacist open mic enough to pack an arena during COVID

Shout out to Zoomers. Y’all make me so proud. ☺️ https://t.co/jGrp5bSZ9T

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 21, 2020

Ocasio-Cortez isn’t the only one who believes the disparity between expectation and reality of the event was orchestrated by young people. Reporting in the New York Times and on CNN suggest that social media users marshaled a campaign to reserve thousands of tickets for the rally — and then not show up.

https://www.tiktok.com/@proloser12245/video/6838621598229056773

It’s not just media reports either. Many parents alleged on Twitter that their children had also taken part in the collective action.

“My 16-year-old daughter and her friends in Park City, Utah, have hundreds of tickets. You have been rolled by America’s teens,” wrote Steve Schmidt, a veteran Republican strategist. “@realDonaldTrump you have been failed by your team. You have been deserted by your faithful. No one likes to root for the losing team.”

My 16 year old daughter and her friends in Park City Utah have hundreds of tickets. You have been rolled by America’s teens. @realDonaldTrump you have been failed by your team. You have been deserted by your faithful. No one likes to root for the losing team. @ProjectLincoln https://t.co/VM5elZ57Qp

— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) June 20, 2020

So my teen daughter, who has Snapchat and TikTok accounts, walked in and said to me "So did it work? Did the teens get all the tickets to the Trump rally?" She's known about this ALL WEEK and I just learned this an hour ago… https://t.co/lcsB50zzoR

— Roberto Quinlan (@r_quinla) June 21, 2020

New York Times journalist C.J. Chivers said that two of his teenagers had taken part in the prank, tweeting that “one of them is sitting at dinner now, laughing and saying teens around the United States fooled the man.”

i have three teenagers. two of them have a pair of tix each to @realDonaldTrump’s rally in tulsa; they registered to spoof POTUS & his campaign. one of them is sitting at dinner now, laughing and saying teens around the united states fooled the man. https://t.co/akLU9o8u3f

— C.J. Chivers (@cjchivers) June 21, 2020

Additionally, at least a few parents around the world claim that it was not limited to the U.S.

My 14 year old, at breakfast in Britain: "Oh, yeah, Dad. I did that too. I registered for three tickets to the Trump rally in Tulsa."

— David D. Kirkpatrick (@ddknyt) June 21, 2020

Brad Parscale denied that a rogue social media campaign had an impact on the RSVP numbers for the rally in a statement to TIME.

“These phony ticket requests never factor into our thinking,” Parscale said. “What makes this lame attempt at hacking our events even more foolish is the fact that every rally is general admission – entry is on a first-come-first-served basis and prior registration is not required. The fact is that a week’s worth of the fake news media warning people away from the rally because of COVID and protestors, coupled with recent images of American cities on fire, had a real impact on people bringing their families and children to the rally.”

The campaign also appeared to threaten to stop credentialing media who report on events.

#IFTTT #Blogger

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