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[Frumple]

He was anti-establishment and banged the same drums anti-government folks did, so yeah, more or less. He tapped both the let-it-all-die crowd and the incompetence/inexperience-is-a-virtue one to various degrees.

Any case clinton's not wrong. Sanders' cost the left the POTUS seat, and largely by being a shit of the primarily backstabbing variety. Buncha' things he could have (not) done that would have avoided pissing all over the dems he was ostensibly on the same side of during the middle of a major election, but hey, didn't happen that way. Not really much in the way of surprises in the face of it in his behaviors since, either.

That said, there's about a half dozen to a dozen other things that did, too, with any one of them probably having been enough to make the difference if things had fell the other way, including campaigning decisions made by clinton's campaign and the DNC. There was a buncha' shit going on last year, and there wasn't really a single cause so much as a lattice of straws settling down on the metaphorical camel's back. Not terribly surprising seeing dem politicians starting to throw some shade at bernie, though, considering he's been spending a fair amount of time in the last several months continuing to snipe at the DNC in general. Not that the bits being called some kind of throw down vitriol were exactly egregious or inaccurate, heh.

Never really sure how much credence should be given to most dems not wanting to throw in for the primary being because of some kind of misplaced kingmaking, though. Folks' opinion of hillary was pretty damn high fairly shortly before the main campaigning kicked off, and there really weren't too many people willing and interested in running last year. So far as candidates go it looked to all appearances like it was a fairly slim year. No real telling now.

[Max™]

[alway]

Meanwhile at the Republican EPA: https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/epa-runs-all-grants-past-a-political-appointee-in-its-pr-office/
A political position has been created specifically to censor any scientific studies mentioning climate change by pulling their grants.

[Sheb]

He was anti-establishment and banged the same drums anti-government folks did, so yeah, more or less. He tapped both the let-it-all-die crowd and the incompetence/inexperience-is-a-virtue one to various degrees.

Any case clinton's not wrong. Sanders' cost the left the POTUS seat, and largely by being a shit of the primarily backstabbing variety. Buncha' things he could have (not) done that would have avoided pissing all over the dems he was ostensibly on the same side of during the middle of a major election, but hey, didn't happen that way. Not really much in the way of surprises in the face of it in his behaviors since, either.

Yeah, but then, Trump had to put up with much worse from his primary opponents (remember Cruz not endorsing him at the convention).

[martinuzz]

Meanwhile at the Republican EPA: https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/epa-runs-all-grants-past-a-political-appointee-in-its-pr-office/
A political position has been created specifically to censor any scientific studies mentioning climate change by pulling their grants.

Damn, that's obscene.

I wonder how long before all academics start leaving the country

[wierd]

The state of academia in the US has been.... Horribad... for a long time now. Our culture does not hold intelligent people in high esteem. Instead, we focus on boobies, butts, and how well you can throw a ball.

[Trekkin]

The state of academia in the US has been.... Horribad... for a long time now. Our culture does not hold intelligent people in high esteem. Instead, we focus on boobies, butts, and how well you can throw a ball.

How convenient, then, that we have crafted a government in which the esteem in which people are held by our culture is almost irrelevant to how much the government wants to pay them. The people do not want us, it is true. It is also true that what they want is irrelevant; it's just that the economic constraints on the people who own the country aren't properly aligned for the long term.

It's trendy to bemoan American anti-intellectualism, but if you actually want more American science, culture is not where to start.

[SalmonGod]

The big difference being attitude.  Most US politicians, Hillary included, speak like they're at a job interview.  Bernie gave each speech like he was in college and this was the one research project he really cared about.  To me and I presume others it felt like he was in touch with the core issues that were important to me, even tho Hillary was on the same side of those issues.  The irony of it all is that the differences between the two were things that would only matter to democrats.  Hillary wanted the government to provide a social safety net, Bernie wanted the same thing but was willing to change chunks of the government to reduce income inequality.

It was more his "not a politician" vibe. Your job interview analogy is an apt one - people who go through interview training, prepare canned answers to the expected questions, dress exactly as expected, and so on often have much less response (positive OR negative) from employers than people who wing it. This is because everybody does it that way, so such applicants merge into a faceless, sexless blur. Doing something different might not get you the job - but it makes you stand out.

I don't think it's just about standing out.  As someone who has actually conducted job interviews and been involved in hiring decisions now - when you interview someone who does everything as expected and everything sounds like a canned response, even if they're spot on what you theoretically want to hear, you come away from the interview feeling like you didn't actually learn anything about the person.  You could hire them, and have zero idea what to actually expect when they show up to the job later.  I've been in interviews with people like this, where credentials may look great on paper and they know all the technically correct and proper things to say... but you ask for a story or two from their work experience or try to coax some twinkle of human spirit out of them beyond the desire to appear professional in the moment and you get a tense, frightened (or worse - genuinely uninspired) nothing.  It can get damn frustrating, because you technically have no reason to pass them up but there's more to being a good employee, at least where I work, than being able to control yourself for half an hour and prove you know stuff.

The person who wings it at least a little bit and provides some unexpected answers doesn't just stand out.  You also get some genuine insight to the person.  First position I was involved in hiring for, I went through a couple dozen interviews mostly like that.  Then there was one girl who was fresh out of college and didn't know anything.  But glowed with sincerity and eagerness, and told a story about how at one of her previous jobs working at a cafeteria, she got frustrated with some minor things that set the team off on a bad footing each day.  So she made a habit of coming in a little bit early to do some extra preparation that didn't just make things operate smoother, but made everyone happier to be there and the work environment more pleasant because of it.  In other words, she spoke to some element of her character beyond a basic capability to show up and do what's requested of them - that she actually reflects on the situation she's in and doesn't just wallow in it but takes unprovoked steps to improve it.  She totally killed the role I had in mind for her, and has turned out to be one of the best employees in the office.

Now I'm not an HR or hiring expert.  And I'm not even one of those who's totally set in the belief that Hillary is a political expediency bot, or doesn't show personal conviction on anything.  Just saying that there's more to that job interview analogy than a general anti-establishment sentiment, or failing to stand out.  The thing Bernie blew Hillary away on is speaking closer to a personal level of empathy with the way people feel about the problems they're facing.  He wouldn't just state current problems and what he planned to do about them.  He'd weave in stories - a variety of them.  He established character, and he did it on multiple levels.  I know this says nothing about qualifications to handle the technicality of the job, but I think that in an age of cynicism, you really need both.  It's easy to tell a crowd that you plan to do what they want and how.  But that's just like the robotic job interview.  The most qualified applicant could also be the one who plans to show up and do the bare minimum to collect their paycheck day to day, and spread negativity and drama through the work environment.  I can tell you that I didn't know much about Hillary beyond the most basic facts of her political career before this past election season.  Maybe I'm in the minority among 2016 voters on that, but considering how easily everyone got swept away into the conservative media narrative about her, I doubt it.  Whenever I did look further or paid attention to her campaigning, I saw acknowledgement of my political views but reluctance to take them seriously.  I saw someone who took a reeeaaallllyyy long time to come around to political stances that have never been questionable to me.  I saw high society fundraising events, and your standard assortment of campaign donations from the financial sector.  I saw the avatar of the party of "Sorry but we're capitalist.  Period."  Didn't appear to be the character I was looking for.  If that perception was wrong, she did an absolutely horrible job portraying what I should have seen.

[Helgoland]

Heh, what I'm taking away from all of this is that America threw out Hillary not because she wouldn't have done a good job, but because she didn't make you feel good about it. Especially considering that Sanders' and Clinton's voting record aligns incredibly closely. Maybe that's the way Sanders helped Trump get elected: He massively reinforced this notion that it's not about doing a good job as president, but that it's about identity - ideological identity, in this case. Not about good governance, but about being a good guy to drink a beer with. That matters when you end up working with a person yourself, but it doesn't necessarily do so when electing an official. The closer analogue would be having networks and connections, and let's be honest, Clinton blows Sanders out of the water there.

It's probably not something he did on purpose, and probably something that any challenger would've done, so don't blame him - blame 'Murrica. Blame TV, blame decades of Republicans dumbing down their base, blame the prosperity gospel, blame postmodernism. Blame the cult of the amateur, of the self-made man, of the people's voice as conveniently embodied in one politician or another. Blame all the poor sods out there who were driven into despising competence, into despising politics for being dirty in the same way that fixing a car is dirty. Blame the politicians who decided to deal with this by throwing money at their constituents, advertisements, leaflets, campaign events, by putting up an illusion around themselves instead of selling the product - themselves - on its actual merits. Don't blame Sanders, but don't blame Trump for anything either. And don't blame Hillary - you wouldn't fault a horse for the invention of the car, or for the smog that car produces.

Insert slow clap gif here. Maybe you guys deserved Trump after all. Maybe there was no way around him.

[Sheb]

Heh, what I'm taking away from all of this is that America threw out Hillary not because she wouldn't have done a good job, but because she didn't make you feel good about it. Especially considering that Sanders' and Clinton's voting record aligns incredibly closely. Maybe that's the way Sanders helped Trump get elected: He massively reinforced this notion that it's not about doing a good job as president, but that it's about identity - ideological identity, in this case. Not about good governance, but about being a good guy to drink a beer with. That matters when you end up working with a person yourself, but it doesn't necessarily do so when electing an official. The closer analogue would be having networks and connections, and let's be honest, Clinton blows Sanders out of the water there.

It's probably not something he did on purpose, and probably something that any challenger would've done, so don't blame him - blame 'Murrica. Blame TV, blame decades of Republicans dumbing down their base, blame the prosperity gospel, blame postmodernism. Blame the cult of the amateur, of the self-made man, of the people's voice as conveniently embodied in one politician or another. Blame all the poor sods out there who were driven into despising competence, into despising politics for being dirty in the same way that fixing a car is dirty. Blame the politicians who decided to deal with this by throwing money at their constituents, advertisements, leaflets, campaign events, by putting up an illusion around themselves instead of selling the product - themselves - on its actual merits. Don't blame Sanders, but don't blame Trump for anything either. And don't blame Hillary - you wouldn't fault a horse for the invention of the car, or for the smog that car produces.

Insert slow clap gif here. Maybe you guys deserved Trump after all. Maybe there was no way around him.

Martin Schulz 2020!

[Antioch]

Democrats lost the presidency by giving their nomination to Clinton instead of Sanders.

[sluissa]

Hillary wouldn't have done a good job. She would have been Obama light, but more abrasive, able to get even less done and in the end keeping us on the same path where we're slowly poisoned to death without realizing it.

Trump at least introduces a foul smell to the room that makes us realize "Hey, something's not right here."

I really doubt Bernie would have pulled off what he wanted. Congress just isn't in the mood to play ball on wild ideas(Or often any ideas) but he at least seemed to mean well, which is more than I can say for the other two candidates who just wanted bragging rights and power.

[Sheb]

Hillary wouldn't have done a good job. She would have been Obama light, but more abrasive, able to get even less done and in the end keeping us on the same path where we're slowly poisoned to death without realizing it.

Trump at least introduces a foul smell to the room that makes us realize "Hey, something's not right here."

I really doubt Bernie would have pulled off what he wanted. Congress just isn't in the mood to play ball on wild ideas(Or often any ideas) but he at least seemed to mean well, which is more than I can say for the other two candidates who just wanted bragging rights and power.

I'm starting to get what Helgo's saying. It's funny how you're lambasting hillary for being abrasive and not get things done, when you're okay for Sanders to get nothing done, because he feels like a nice guy.

[SalmonGod]

I think it's more about trusting the person than feeling good about them.  Like I said... we're in an age of cynicism.  And voters not doing the right kinds of research has a lot to do with that I'm sure, but that's something candidates have to deal with, unfortunately.

[Arx]

I'm starting to get what Helgo's saying. It's funny how you're lambasting hillary for being abrasive and not get things done, when you're okay for Sanders to get nothing done, because he feels like a nice guy.

If someone were getting all of their politics information from this thread, I would be entirely unsurprised if they thought Clinton was actually a soulless automaton with a soulless-automaton-like desire to somehow corporatise everything while simultaneously changing nothing.


Of course, instead of "alleged slow burn to inevitable wipeout" we now have "all but a neo Nazi, practically banning climate change research, of-course-I'm-legitimate". I'll be honest, I struggle to find an angle from which freefall into the cauldron of acid looks better than parachuting towards it, unless you actually want to die.