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Tiny kaiju's avatar

teabaggers got elected by a fundamentally racist. Inch of reactionary idiots who never understood the purpose of government much less how it works. I don't really know what a left wing equivalent of the TP would present as it's goals that would be substantially different from what the mainstream Democrats espouse. Unless Eat the Rich becomes a literal thing. Granted anonymous, corporate money is a ethically dangerous ingredient in any political system, but that requires an much needed overhaul of the whole election funding system. Which is more complicated than I feel like going into at the moment.These days I'm thinking Bernie (who is my Senator and whom I voted for in the Primary) appealed to people, young people especially because he spoke loudly and encouragingly about their concerns. He didn't necessarily say how they were going to accomplish them. Let's label him with the "Angry Young Man" archetype. I say young because angry old men prefer the status quo. Hillary Clinton on the other hand, as always been more pragmatic. Apparently people find that boring, and uninspiring and off putting somehow. Let's call Hillary "The Wise Old woman who lives in that spooky hut in the woods." I seem to have wandered a bit there.I agree the return to "moderate/centerist" Third Way nonsense is a non-starter. I think, I hope, the Democratic Party has wished up to the fact you can't continue to be the reasonable adult in the room and deal with spoiled children as thought hey were adults too. The trick though, is how to get stuff done without resorting to the same "I'll burn it down if I don't get my way." behavior. The gerrymandering is done at the state and local level. You can't fix anything at a national level without taking those offices. I may be completely wrong, but smart people want to know a head of time what the plan is, how does it work, what are the pros and cons. Do you equate that with being moderate?ETA I got distracted by external forces at the end. Hopefully we can type at each other again later and clarify bits and pieces.

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Brittany Wilkins's avatar

I'm going to disagree a bit with the position that Bernie Sanders didn't say how to accomplish them. He posed how to fund tuition free college with a speculation tax on Wall Street transactions. He said he would raise income taxes to fund the Medicare for All bill.

Hillary Clinton put her policy ideas and details out there but she didn't really have a plan about how to bring Republicans to the table either.

I can agree to certain extent that the ''burn everything down'' motto is not a way to govern but I don't believe that Hillary Clinton is the wise pragmatist that everyone touts her to be. She took up legislation and policy positions that were terrible for the American people. She's changed her positions so many times to appear pragmatic but the devil is always in the details.

Republicans hate her as much as they hate Bernie Sanders. If she was elected she would be in the exact same position that Barack Obama was. So even if she had a detailed game plan, she wasn't going to get it passed without doing some shady compromising like Barack Obama did.

Plenty of news articles have already shown that her and Bernie Sanders have voted the same way on legislation about 93% of the time. Where they differed was on immigration policy details, military intervention, and granting bank bailouts.

I know there are smart people who believe that Hillary Clinton was the least of two evils. I voted for her, just like I voted for Barack Obama. But there are also smart people who also didn't want Hillary Clinton in office to continue the same neo-liberal policies that has not benefited the average American worker. She was going to expand military use, rub shoulders with Wall Street and continue to give us watered down Republican light policy solutions because of her connections to high dollar industry donors.

I don't think it was unreasonable to be against the continuation of those policies. But we can agree to disagree.

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