We are heading towards an Idiocracy!

[Solid Snake]

The leader (Chair) of the Nevada Democratic Party, a woman named Roberta Lange who supports Hillary Clinton (as most politicians and leadership figures in the party's instrumentalities do) pushed a new set of rules through a week or so before the convention allocated delegates that drastically increased her ability to control the state convention's procedures without any checks and balances. The Chair was suddenly in charge of the convention process without a vote (whereas typically the Chair is voted in, albeit usually without controversy), the Chair was given unilateral authority to appoint all officers, the Chair appointed every committee who counted votes and allocated delegates, and -- perhaps most importantly -- the Chair was granted unilateral authority to decide motions and speakers to recognize (which basically meant that the Chair controlled all speech on the floor.)

In the end, Lange utilized her authority to strip a disproportionate number of Sanders-supporting participants from participating under ludicrous pretenses (a common suppression tactic is requiring everyone to be a registered Democrat, as Sanders' appeal has broadened the party's tent to include youth and registered independents.) Then, the ability to control the floor basically prevented Sanders supporters from complaining about issues like inadequate parking at the facilities preventing Sanders supporters from participating (as you had to arrive 'on time', apparently) and about sixty Sanders supporters being stripped of the right to participate outright -- which, again, skewed Clinton's final national delegate count from Nevada away from what the popular vote in the state should dictate the results would be.

All these moves were correctly interpreted by Sanders supporters as efforts to skew the process and suppress speech -- the idea here is Clinton wants to win more delegates than she should, sweep it under the rug, prevent Sanders' supporters from raising objections, and generally secure an easier path to the Democratic nomination (I'd imagine from Clinton's perspective, the idea here is to twist Sanders' arm into suspending his campaign earlier than he plans to, for 'party unity' reasons and whatnot. Clinton wants to move on to the general election -- and it's not like I even blame her for that inclination, but there are other ways to encourage party unity that don't involve corrupting the rules of state conventions.)

Mind you, Clinton won the state. She just ultimately didn't win by a margin proportional to the delegates actually assigned at the state convention, and once the delegates were assigned Sanders supporters weren't given much an opportunity to object 'by the rules', which led to them objecting in an unruly fashion instead, which thereafter gave the Nevada Democratic Party the opportunity to just shut the whole thing down before it got too 'violent'.

Most sane Sanders supporters -- the ones who aren't on the fringes making Sanders look bad with threats and idiotic posturing -- aren't upset that Sanders couldn't steal Nevada. They're upset because Clinton simply doesn't have to rely on stealing delegates herself to win the nomination, but she's not only stealing delegates, she's also usurping Sanders supporters right to speak out or even participate at the state conventions. It's the epitome of any Sanders' supporters fears about Hillary Clinton realized; even when she doesn't need to rely on corruption, she'll act corruptly anyway, because it appears to be all she knows. If you're a Sanders supporter because you view Sanders as fundamentally honest and Hillary as untrustworthy and too ingratiated in Washington D.C. political mudslinging -- and if you view Hillary as 'corporate' and incapable of relating to real, everyday human beings -- this doesn't reassure you that Hillary's going to change anytime between now and the general election.

Only one problem here -- Sanders supporters are playing right into what I expect is Hillary's long con game here. Namely, Hillary's deliberately goading Sanders supporters into becoming enraged, acting out on that rage, and then acting out of emotion in such a way that Hillary's surrogates can then say "Look at how unruly these kids supporting Sanders are, with their death threats and their misogyny!" It's a pretty ingenious strategy -- act just sketchy enough on arcane party convention rules and technicalities to infuriate Sanders supporters, but on such technicalities that the general public (like you, RPG) barely understand or care to research. Then when the Sanders supporters react to the injustices disproportionately by screaming bloody murder, acting like an unruly mob and (in a few extreme idiotic cases) sending out death threats to people like Lange, that's what makes headlines -- and the general public can surely understand why death threats are awful and people who make those threats should be scorned.

Hillary's succeeding in making Bernie's supporters look awful in the mainstream media through her more subtle yet ever-present brand of corrupt douchebaggery. If that's her plan as to how she hopes to unify the party around her candidacy, I'm not going to support it. That doesn't mean I support the idiot BernieBros who think death threats are a viable counteracting strategy either, it just means I'm not fond of Hillary for thinking this was a wiser course of action than just having the state conventions play out naturally, allocating delegates organically based on percentages of votes acquired and trying to appeal to Bernie supporters with honey (not vinegar.)

[rpgdemon]

http://www.politifact.com/nevada/sta...da-democratic/

Yeah, fuck it.

Sanders has officially lost me. I was never going to write him in, I always thought anyone on the Bernie or Bust train were privileged fools. They're people willing to pay for their revolution with someone else's blood. But I also was holding out hope that he could pull off a crazy miracle, and thought he was doing good by staying in.

He's not. I just want him to drop out now.

He's no longer The Good Guy here. Not the person he started as, at least. He lost me for not immediately denouncing these people who are sending vile death threats to this woman. He's been falling further and further into scummery when being a good person has been losing the race for him, but this seals it for me.

When something like this happens, you make a comment. You say that it is unacceptable behavior. Someone unwilling to do that is "not qualified" to be president. They're not even qualified to be in the public arena.

People have been comparing Sanders to Trump from the beginning, saying they're two sides of the same coin. At this point, I believe it. He might as well be campaigning for Trump at this point with some of the comments he's making, and his supporters are increasingly evil gross men.

---------- Post added at 05:19 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:12 PM ----------

For reference, here's Sanders's response to the whole thing:

https://berniesanders.com/press-rele...tement-nevada/

"Super PACS! Corruption! WE had violence against us, months ago! Look at how bad WE had it!" Not one mention that any threats against Ms. Lange should cease immediately and are unwarrented.

That's not a response to what's going on. That's a distraction technique, and proves my fears from the beginning that he can only keep parroting his same talking points. When a woman is having death threats made against her by your supporters, you don't try to justify it with talk about super PACs, or the violence that unrelated people carried out against you.

[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by rpgdemon

and his supporters are increasingly evil gross men.

I better apply for my "I'm evil solely for supporting Bernie Sanders" badge, then.

I think what this really shows is how short our memory spans are and how easily media narratives can be hijacked by particular campaigns at particular moments in time, insofar as Hillary's losing campaign -- and her most strident supporters -- eight years ago said far, far, far more brazenly offensive things about Obama in 2008 than Bernie's said about Hillary this year, but no one's pointing to 2008 as inherently disqualifying for Hillary this year in the same way that Clinton's sycophants are pointing to Nevada as inherently disqualifying for Bernie.

Like, everything you've said -- and I won't even say it's an inaccurate criticism, insofar as Bernie's response was totally tone-deaf! -- applies to pretty much every politician, as I can cherry-pick moments when Hillary, Obama, Howard Dean, John Kerry, Joe Biden, every Republican and every Democrat has said something idiotically grotesque, been tone-deaf to legitimate criticism, or been biased in furthering their own cause in an adversarial democratic political process.

Like, here's what saddens me: Bernie promised us in the beginning that he wouldn't run a campaign like every other politician, and it turns out he's just like any other politician. Bummer! But there are still crucial distinctions to be made on matters of policy, and independently of Bernie making the same political miscalculations out of his personal bias that Hillary has countless times in the past, his policy positions are much better than Clinton's, which in and of itself is a noble reason to continue supporting his candidacy.

Falling into the temptation to find 'good' and 'evil' in some overarching narrative in which all Bernie Sanders supporters fit into a certain paradigm just because a few idiots behaved idiotically is ludicrous. It'd be akin to calling Hillary and her supporters all evil racists because they said some very racist things about Obama that one time. (Then she became his Secretary of State, the two actually found they could work together fairly well all things considered, and Obama staffers went onto Bill Simmons' podcast at one point to compliment Hillary's professionalism and her work ethic as a member of the Obama team.)

(...This isn't really directed at RPG specifically. It's directed at legions of my pro-Hillary friends who've basically taken the recent media portrayal of the Nevada debacle as a carte blanche invitation to stereotype and antagonize all Bernie Sanders supporters as parasites degrading the Democratic Party. Just as the Republican Party shouldn't be viewed by conservatives as a mere vehicle for Donald Trump's candidacy, nor should the Democratic Party be hijacked by Hillary Clinton and utilized as a bludgeon against all those who would dare stand in her way.)

EDIT: An inevitably flawed response to my ranting will be something to the effect of "Snake, you're defending BernieBros who are issuing death threats!" and it's like, no, I've been pretty clear that I find their actions vile; I just also don't view their actions as representative of the vast majority of Sanders supporters, in the same way that those racist comments made by Hillary surrogates in 2008 didn't justify criticisms that all of Hillary's supporters were racist thugs. The irony of most of my ranting is that it comes from a deep-down desire that Hillary Clinton unify the Democratic Party instead of fracturing it, when it is her responsibility and not Bernie's at this juncture to unify the party as she's the presumptive nominee.

It's clear that Hillary's preferred tactic at this juncture is to demonize all Bernie Sanders supporters and concoct a narrative wherein Bernie is a misogynistic jackass and his supporters are all violent Neanderthals. And that tactic, moreso than anything Bernie's doing now, is what's going to result in a Trump victory in November. Hillary's alienating what should be her progressive base by refusing to acknowledge the substantive policies Bernie's campaigned on. She's going to stubbornly stay in the center, antagonize the left even more than she'll antagonize the right (she's buddying up with Jeb Bush donors instead of progressives, for heaven's sake!) and act under the mistaken belief that she is entitled to defeat Donald Trump simply by virtue of Trump's odious and underqualified nature, which is not a viable strategy.

I do not understand why Hillary won't just let Bernie win the delegates voters proportionally allocated for him, invite Sanders supporters into her campaign with open arms, and attract the sane among the Bernie supporters with honey and not vinegar. But Hillary hasn't made any significant progressive concessions in the wake of Bernie's campaigning. At this point, the only reason Bernie's still in the race is to try to force Hillary to pivot a bit further to the left, but Hillary refuses to budge. She's going to be a pro-Wall Street, pro-War Hawk, pro-Kissinger foreign policy Neocon centrist until the bitter end, it seems.

[rpgdemon]

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

I better apply for my "I'm evil solely for supporting Bernie Sanders" badge, then.

I didn't mean to imply "His supporters are all gross", more that "Gross people vocally support him without being rebuked by his organization".

At the same time: Those vocal gross supporters, honestly, are indistinguishable to me from GamerGaters. Listen to the voicemail in the Politifact article. At a certain point, you have to pull yourself away from a group that is publicly and vocally gross. There were probably some GamerGaters who were in it for ethics in journalism, but it doesn't matter because the organization was a hate group through and through, based on its public portrayal and actions. Everyone here said as much in a criticism of (I dunno who, and I don't really want to dig through and find out), when they were saying that they were in it for the REAL message: It doesn't matter what the real goals are, you don't support an organization whose public image is gross.

To me, the Sanders campaign has passed that tipping point. It doesn't matter how good his intentions are; What's actually happening is that he is becoming being a beacon for bad people to congregate around. They're overshadowing his message, and corrupting it into a different image. It's giving Trump fuel and increasing his odds of winning the presidency.

As much as I hate to say it, Bernie has no chance of winning. I used to think he was fighting the good fight, pushing Hillary towards better policy, and his participation in the race was still doing good. But as things get increasingly ugly, he is unable to keep his message on point, and it WILL become reduced down to the largest vocal block - Which are the Bernie Bros.

---------- Post added at 06:00 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:55 PM ----------

You ninja'd your edit in, but I'm gonna leave my post as is.

Just to make sure it's clear though: My point isn't that you're defending Bernie Bros, but that at a certain point they define what the message of the campaign is about, by merit of being loudest, and not being excised from it. Hopefully the GG analogy is clear on that.

The flawed defense against that analogy is to immediately brush it off, defending against the analogy, instead of the point being made. Bernie's campaign is clearly not identical to GG; For one thing, it actually has a pretty clear and good message that is supposed to be it's core. The analogy is not to equate the two, it is to draw parallels between how they are seen.

[Solid Snake]

At the end of the day, I'm really just disappointed that Hillary's going to rely on the most indefensible of the BernieBros to marginalize the substance of Bernie's campaign, brush aside the DNC and the Democratic establishment's treatment of Bernie in general and remain entrenched in the center.

There was an opportunity for a narrative of a positive dialogue between Bernie and Hillary in the wake of Bernie's unexpectedly strong appeal to result in Hillary pivoting left, adopting some (certainly not all) of Bernie's policy perspectives and broadening her base heading into the general election. That's not going to happen now, and both sides are going to antagonize each other relentlessly.

My only additional point regarding your argument that people should "pull...away from a group that is publicly and vocally gross" is that you're not employing your own logic evenhandedly, or else you would've viewed Hillary's camp with equal disgust and disdain years ago. Which actually results in another issue: Every group has its bad apples, but groups that are advocating for serious revolutionary change are always going to be at greater risk of being characterized by the mainstream media as publicly contemptible or vile. Like, certain members of the African American Civil Rights movement issued death threats against whites; and the mainstream media disproportionately elevated those death threats into the public consciousness as gross and inexcusable because at the time those civil rights advocates were an abnormal minority group. Not that BernieBros have all that much in common with genuine Civil Rights pioneers, but the point still stands that Sanders' movement is very much outside the political status quo, and therefore the media is going to highlight every lawless move his supporters make, all the while brushing aside all the unethical violations Hillary's supporters are guilty of as just a 'standard byproduct of the political process.'

I'm just tickled by the logical leaps Hillary's gang are making to simultaneously view Bernie as guilty as sin while viewing their own preferred candidate with rose-colored glasses, when the reality of the matter is more like: Both Hillary and Bernie have crazy-ass supporters (and Hillary's supporters, when she has been losing in the past, have been equally eager to issue their own threats), Hillary has been just as lax in the past as Bernie is now in correcting her misguided vitriolic supporters, and therefore the problem strikes me as more institutional (related to our democratic political process in general and how it eagerly stokes antagonism) than personal (it's not something innate or inherent to Bernie's campaign that isn't present in every other American campaign for the Presidency, Democratic or Republican; Trump and Cruz and Hillary and everyone else have had these kinds of kooks in their ranks, and every losing candidate in the primary process, Hillary included, has enabled the unethical behavior of their most contemptible surrogates. Hell, Hillary in 2008 refused to criticize surrogates who attacked Obama as unfit for the presidency because of his race, and it was a huge issue then...if that doesn't disqualify her now, how do the BernieBros disqualify Bernie?)

[Marc v4.0]

I wish that the meteor that was supposed to wipe us all out last month hadn't been a hoax.

[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by Marc v4.0

I wish that the meteor that was supposed to wipe us all out last month hadn't been a hoax.

If you're referring to the travesty I think you're referring to, at least the ever-so-slightly-decent human beings in that building got to shout "Shame!" repeatedly, that was fun.

[Marc v4.0]

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

If you're referring to the travesty I think you're referring to, at least the ever-so-slightly-decent human beings in that building got to shout "Shame!" repeatedly, that was fun.

I'm talking about the ball of rock and metal that was 'due' to hit the Earth sometime last month and cause an extinction level disaster, but turned out to just be a hoax.

[Solid Snake]

I was referring more to the underlying reason why you'd want that ball of rock and metal to devastate humanity; alternatively, living in a world where Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will be President of the United States is also an adequate justification.

[Marc v4.0]

Everything is just bad, man. We did a real shit job with things. Let's just wipe the slate clean and see how the next species gets on.