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[Powder Miner]

I didn't have respect for the Huffington Post in the first place, so not a lot has changed.

[itisnotlogical]

Any institution that outputs a large amount of material for the public is going to have a bias one way or the other, so at least know where the bias is.

[mainiac]

Gentlemen! You can't fight in here! This is the war room!

Yeah "fighting".  On one side you have someone who will bend over backwards to call people like me bad actors or criminals.  On the other hand I am maliciously and with intention of forethought saying the label is unjust.

You know I finally put together what is so irksome about this thing.  It's the age old "disavow your radicalism" but coming from the other side.  Constantly members of any progressive movement are accused of ideological rigidity.  Lincoln wrote how southerners were constantly complaining that all abolitionists were terrorists like John Brown.  Feminists got called lesbians.  Gays got called perverts.  The important part is it's fundamentally asymmetrical, we had the Red Scare and the McCarthy hearings but no one was ever dragged before the Senate on suspicion of being a KKK member or supporting Hitler, in fact the Nazis had jobs waiting for them after the war.

This is old news of course.  What's interesting is that we've hit a wrinkle where it's the more left wing movement applying this treatment to the relatively right wing movement.  Bernie Sanders supporters aren't collectively responsible for every sin.  Bernie Sanders denounced the sexist attacks of a handful of Bernie Bros and that was the end of it.  Bernie Sanders fired the staffer who (probably) was responsible for stealing proprietary information and that was that.  The individuals who fucked up were to blame.  But every democrat who supports Clinton is corrupt and in the pocket of Wall Street.  Doesn't matter how many or who you are, some Clinton supports are corporate sellouts so Clinton supports have collective responsibility.

So that's new.  And annoying.

[Spehss _]

Any institution that outputs a large amount of material for the public is going to have a bias one way or the other, so at least know where the bias is.

Yeah, I can agree with that. Gotta take the news stories with a grain of salt.

I kinda let my idealism get away from me a bit earlier.

Gentlemen! You can't fight in here! This is the war room!

Yeah "fighting".  On one side you have someone who will bend over backwards to call people like me bad actors or criminals.  On the other hand I am maliciously and with intention of forethought saying the label is unjust.

You know I finally put together what is so irksome about this thing.  It's the age old "disavow your radicalism" but coming from the other side.  Constantly members of any progressive movement are accused of ideological rigidity.  Lincoln wrote how southerners were constantly complaining that all abolitionists were terrorists like John Brown.  Feminists got called lesbians.  Gays got called perverts.  The important part is it's fundamentally asymmetrical, we had the Red Scare and the McCarthy hearings but no one was ever dragged before the Senate on suspicion of being a KKK member or supporting Hitler, in fact the Nazis had jobs waiting for them after the war.

This is old news of course.  What's interesting is that we've hit a wrinkle where it's the more left wing movement applying this treatment to the relatively right wing movement.  Bernie Sanders supporters aren't collectively responsible for every sin.  Bernie Sanders denounced the sexist attacks of a handful of Bernie Bros and that was the end of it.  Bernie Sanders fired the staffer who (probably) was responsible for stealing proprietary information and that was that.  The individuals who fucked up were to blame.  But every democrat who supports Clinton is corrupt and in the pocket of Wall Street.  Doesn't matter how many or who you are, some Clinton supports are corporate sellouts so Clinton supports have collective responsibility.

So that's new.  And annoying.

Doesn't seem much different than Sanders supporters or Sanders himself getting branded socialists or commies, or Trump supporters getting branded nazis or racist bigots or Trump being compared to Hitler for running the nationalist populist platform and saying politically incorrect things. I'd say it's just the "us vs them" mentality at work.

[smjjames]

I don't think you're corrupt just because you support Clinton, though you do have your stubborn streak when it comes to Clinton. Not that it's a bad thing neccesarily.

It's also been the year of the anti-establishment, so, there's that factor on both sides of the spectrum, Trumps end and Sanders end of the spectrum that is.

Much of the Clinton support in the establishment is a combination of bandwagoning, her popularity, 'Clinton is inevitable', and probably a touch of running from Sanders socialist label.

[WealthyRadish]

You know I finally put together what is so irksome about this thing.

There are some other cases of the far-left bashing on the less far-left, like the strange relationship between communists and social democrats. But I think what we're seeing with Sanders is more similar to common features of populist movements than core ideological difference, with the infallible reform leader promising real change on the back of popular outrage and so on. It's led to what I'm finding to be a somewhat strange conflict between two candidates who are largely the same on most issues, but made irreconcilable by only a handful of Sanders' anti-establishment convictions.

That said, I think these convictions are important enough for the irreconcilability to be justified. Clinton's early comments on big business, the major sticking point of campaign finance reform (made all the more glaring by her super-PAC), and her evolving campaign tactics based so clearly on immediate needs and horrific pandering over believable honesty, they all make actively supporting Clinton unpalatable for me. The pandering Sanders does is at least backed by a remarkable earnestness, as much as I don't like some of his rabid supporters.

But I'm not even registered, and that won't change when Clinton wins, so feel free to ignore my ramblings.

[smjjames]

If both Trump and Sanders get the nomination, it'll be a hell of a ride to the general election. Possibly with Bloomberg or some other third candidate attempting to play the centrist/moderate.

[mainiac]

Doesn't seem much different than Sanders supporters or Sanders himself getting branded socialists or commies, or Trump supporters getting branded nazis or racist bigots or Trump being compared to Hitler for running the nationalist populist platform and saying politically incorrect things. I'd say it's just the "us vs them" mentality at work.

Trump gets weird labels because he is weird and he proclaims his own weirdness.  Normal republicans dont get that.  Normal democrats do.  When Rubio says that Obama wants to make American not be great, it's hum-drum politics as usual.  It's only when he screws up and repeats himself three times that people think it's absurd.  What happens constantly and is considered not worth commenting on is often quite important but hard to even notice.  We expect democrats to prove they dont have very, very unusual views.

There is a tiny, tiny fringe in the left that wants America to not be great.  The best place to find them it to go through the comments section of foreign policy online magazine articles where they will be insisting that Russia or Iran or China needs to kick America in the teeth to save the world.  Obama is expected to prove that he is not a member of this radical fringe that wants America to fail.  Rubio on the other hand is not expected to prove that he doesn't support kicking all muslims out of the country.  It would be weird and offensive to suggest he did.  There is no left wing equivalent attack on the right to what Rubio can say about Obama with no one batting an eye.  And Obama is the president, the dude in the middle of politics.

We label things partisan politics when they are exclusively attacks levied leftward.  And not just by the far right, it's considered perfectly centrist to bemoan Obama as a paternalistic socialist.  But with Sanders/Clinton we see punching rightward in a way that doesn't normally happen.  If I said that all Sanders supporters were to blame for stealing data or sexist bullying or belittling black people, it would justifiably be dismissed as absurd.  But when the Sanders supporters (the man himself doesn't do this) make the accusation towards the right, it's considered just partisan politics.  And it's an unusual thing, Obama supporters didn't accuse Clinton of being on the take because she supported the individual mandate back in 2008.

The essential thing is that we are labeling behavior partisan that exists entirely in one direction.

[Spehss _]

If both Trump and Sanders get the nomination, it'll be a hell of a ride to the general election. Possibly with Bloomberg or some other third candidate attempting to play the centrist/moderate.

I think if both Trump and Sanders get the popular votes it would be the democratic equivalent of the majority of the nation's population standing up all at the same time and shouting "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this anymore."

[FearfulJesuit]

Just woke up to bickering...mainiac, seriously, cut it out. You'll get yourself banned and possibly the thread locked.

[Amperzand]

If both Trump and Sanders get the nomination, it'll be a hell of a ride to the general election. Possibly with Bloomberg or some other third candidate attempting to play the centrist/moderate.

I think if both Trump and Sanders get the popular votes it would be the democratic equivalent of the majority of the nation's population standing up all at the same time and shouting "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this anymore."

I know I am. :V

[Rolan7]

Just woke up to bickering...mainiac, seriously, cut it out. You'll get yourself banned and possibly the thread locked.

You're not helping by jumping in on a side like that.  They both had decent points, and just got too heated against one another.

[TheBiggerFish]

Well that was surprising.

Also

If both Trump and Sanders get the nomination, it'll be a hell of a ride to the general election. Possibly with Bloomberg or some other third candidate attempting to play the centrist/moderate.

I think if both Trump and Sanders get the popular votes it would be the democratic equivalent of the majority of the nation's population standing up all at the same time and shouting "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this anymore."

I know I am. :V

[mainiac]

Just woke up to bickering...mainiac, seriously, cut it out. You'll get yourself banned and possibly the thread locked.

If you took all the times that people insulted me for expressing an opinion, it would be longer then most of the threads in this forum.  No one has once apologized to me for this.

[smjjames]

I don't think I've ever intentionally insulted you, but if I did by accident, sorry maniac.