Get over it

No one is entitled to hand pick a president in violation of the democratic will of the majority, whether young or just plain angry. Clearly millenials have no problem voting for Clinton in the general. You've been on a vendetta against Clinton since I joined this site over three years ago. It's obvious from your comments above that you aren't concerned about the issues enough to even bother looking at her policy proposals. Unions have endorsed Clinton. Clearly they see her as the best candidate to advance their interests. They speak for their interests, not you.

Bernie never advanced an alternative foreign policy. He didn't care enough to even engage substantively in the subject or even assemble a foreign policy team. As much as people like me might wish for a less hawkish foreign policy, no foreign policy is not a plausible alternative. I rather have someone who has some understanding around the world. It's too important to leave to someone who doesn't even care to engage with that aspect of the job of president.

Then there is the fact that his entire talking point about "not having a super pac" proved to be empty rhetoric. Staffers who just left his campaign are working for one in Alaska that started a year ago!. http://time.com/4261350/bernie-sanders-super-pac-alaska-millenials/ By the way, that's illegal, as were the $23 million in excess campaign contributions that went to his affiliated pac and his campaign, prompting a series of FEC inquiries (middle and end of Feb).
http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/02/12/f-e-c-tells-sanders-campaign-that-some-donors-may-have-given-too-much/?_r=4
http://docquery.fec.gov/pdf/988/201602110300034988/201602110300034988.pdf
And again. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/02/26/bernie-sanders-campaign-contributions/80999298/
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/politics/2016/02/26/feds-flag-bernie-sanders-campaign-contributions/80985898/

That's more violations that any candidate in US history. You fell for it hook, line and sinker, all because you despise one woman who seeks to be president, on a platform to the left of any General Election candidate in thirty to forty years. Oh, the party has gone to the "right." Nonsense. Her policy positions show the very opposite. That is the doing of the American people. They have made clear to her what they want and she has listened, which is in fact the responsibility of elected representatives.

The chorus of cries against the "establishment" just so happens to correspond to the presidency of a black man and the first woman as a serious contender for the presidency. Voters who want "anti-establishment" have Trump as an option. Like Bernie, he hearkens back to a "great" American past, that just happens to correspond to a period when the majority were denied civil rights or economic opportunity. Unlike Bernie, his appeal is brazenly racist. That may be partly why independents and even some Democrats have crossed over to support him in larger numbers. Polling demonstrates that it is not the poorest Americans who are most angry but rather whites, even those far more prosperous than the majority; they see themselves as having lost out in comparison to the rest of society.

Voters will have a stark choice in the general election. Trump stands for everything that Clinton doesn't. She Clinton doesn't believe the white male bourgeoisie deserves more than the rest. She doesn't seek to restore them to what they see as her rightful place atop the capitalist world order, during the great years of American empire that ensured their comfort along with the subjugation of the majority at home and abroad.

The irony of decrying American foreign policy while also lamenting the decline of the middle class is that American prosperity was secured through coups and massive land grabs that maintained access to national resources for US corporations, whether American Sugar, United Fruit (La Fruteria in 100 Years of Solitude), ITT, or Kennecott and Anaconda Copper. An entire theory of economic inequality was developed around that geopolitical relationship: Dependency theory. People who have more than 99% of the world's population complain about how exploited they are because a few billionaires have even more, with no concept of how their lifestyle is made possible by horrific exploitation around the globe.

I see the same people who go on about corporatist this and that talking about their wardrobe of couture gowns, four bathroom homes, and how exploitative intern salaries of $70k a year are, like they can't imagine getting by on so little. It astounds me. I have been insulted about my so-called alliance with the rich by people who have never been depended on food stamps or welfare in their lives, who didn't grow up surrounded by drug dealing and prostitution, and have no idea what it's like to be poor. I know that isn't every Bernie supporter, not by a long margin. But I resent the construct of the 99% since it empowers those in the top 20% to pretend like their experiences have anything in common with people at the bottom. I've been in the very bottom 5% (US, not global) and in the 50%-55%, and the difference is monumental, completely life changing.

If you haven't yet voted in the primary, no one is stopping you from doing so. Bush, Fiorina, and O'Malley all got votes on Tuesday. I myself voted for Dean even after Kerry was the only one in the race. Your vote is your own, but it is only one vote. No one owes you, or your supposed concern for millenials, their vote. Democracy. One person, one vote. Deal with it.

Why I don't support Bernie Sanders

A Bernie supporter posted a thread asking why Clinton supporters didn't believe Bernie. I responded quite substantively but got no response. Someone then suggested I post this as an OP, so I am doing so.

The great chasm between rhetoric and action

Immigration. On national television he announced he did not vote to protect the Minutemen. He insisted Clinton had pulled one part of a complex bill out of context. The fact is he voted for a designated amendment that did prohibit the Homeland Security from informing the Mexican government about Minutemen activity. https://www.congress.gov/amendment/109th-congress/house-amendment/971/text
Roll call vote ( linked to on page with text of amendment) clearly shows his yes vote under independents: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll224.xml

His voting record in general on immigration differs dramatically from how he presents himself. http://votesmart.org/candidate/key-votes/27110/bernie-sanders/40/immigration#.VueLNJwrLWI
From the time he entered congress, he voted against every immigration reform bill until 2013, when, it appears, he may have been thinking about a run for the presidency.

In general I am suspicious of people who over-promise. I have seen Sanders make a number of promises (from overturning Citizens United, to within his first term making the US no longer have the highest prison population on earth, on and on) that are simply not within the purview of the presidency.

His statements about not "having" or "doing" Super pacs is particularly disingenuous to me. He said in a recent debate, "we decided not to do a Super Pac" and "Hillary Clinton has a Super Pac." Those statements play to the American public's ignorance about campaign finance law. Candidates do not "do" or "have" Super Pacs. They are legally separate entities. Yet Bernie has benefited from more super pac and dark money spending than Clinton, by a large margin. He also has affiliated PACs, which have, along with his campaign, been cited for repeated campaign finance violations. He pretends the issue is about personal virtue, ignoring all the spending done on his behalf, yet his campaign doesn't even follow the already existing and all to meager campaign finance law. He has been cited by the FEC for hundreds of violations, more than any campaign I know about. ( I link to a number of sources in this post that provide evidence for the preceding paragraph. http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=1258143. And https://gobling.wordpress.com/2016/02/13/fec-hits-bernie2016-with-campaign-finance-violations/ $23 million is not a minor amount of money).

Another key argument for his campaign is corporate accountability, yet he applies that only to one area of the economy: Wall Street.
He voted to grant immunity to gun corporations. After first denying that vote in an early debate, then saying he would rethink the position, he championed his vote in the debate just prior to Michigan. In addition to being all over the map on the issue, I interpret his last debate statement on the vote as a message to the rural Michigan voters. The NRA tweet the next day expressing support for his position helped in that regard. He played the politics of it masterfully, but I find the position reprehensible, not only because of my views on gun control but because it contradicts his claims to stand as an anti-establishment candidate against corporate excess.

He denounces military spending while voting for pet projects for VT (the f-35). Again, a great difference between rhetoric and behavior.

Then single payer. After disclosing to the press in 2010 that single payer was a nonstarter in the Obamacare debates, he now has built a campaign around attacking Clinton for not embracing a policy he himself said would only have gotten 8 or 9 votes, and that was when the Democrats had a majority in both houses. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/sanders-single-payer-never-had-a-chance

I think he believes what he says about a political revolution, but that doesn't make it any more convincing. Turnout is not up from 2008. There is no indication that Bernie would receive the kind of voter support that would transform congress, as he claimed in his last debate. He has no answer as to how he will work with the existing congress. In other words, he has no plan to implement any of what he promises. I judge him lacking in credibility.

I also find highly disconcerting the fact he hasn't even assembled a foreign policy team and that he thinks it acceptable to pivot away from questions on foreign policy. http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/bernie-sanders-foreign-policy-deficit-218431
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/election/article65064407.html That position might work for a candidate running to raise issues, but not for someone who seeks to actually be president. I want a president to be informed, engaged, and competent.

Another thing that really bothers me is his failure to take responsibility for his own votes. He blamed Clinton for mass incarceration but accepts no responsibility for his own vote for those laws. He announced it was a disgrace that Gitmo hasn't been closed, yet he himself voted on at least two occasions against closing it. How is it possible not to find that sort of thing questionable?

The great chasm between rhetoric and action

Immigration. On national television he announced he did not vote to protect the Minutemen. He insisted Clinton had pulled one part of a complex bill out of context. The fact is he voted for a designated amendment that did prohibit the Homeland Security from informing the Mexican government about Minutemen activity. https://www.congress.gov/amendment/109th-congress/house-amendment/971/text
Roll call vote ( linked to on page with text of amendment) clearly shows his yes vote under independents: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll224.xml

His voting record in general on immigration differs dramatically from how he presents himself. http://votesmart.org/candidate/key-votes/27110/bernie-sanders/40/immigration#.VueLNJwrLWI
From the time he entered congress, he voted against every immigration reform bill until 2013, when, it appears, he may have been thinking about a run for the presidency.

In general I am suspicious of people who over-promise. I have seen Sanders make a number of promises (from overturning Citizens United, to within his first term making the US no longer have the highest prison population on earth , on and on) that are simply not within the purview of the presidency.

His statements about not "having" or "doing" Super pacs is particularly disingenuous to me. He said in a recent debate, "we decided not to do a Super Pac" and "Hillary Clinton has a Super Pac." Those statements play to the American public's ignorance about campaign finance law. Candidates do not "do" or "have" Super Pacs. They are legally separate entities. Yet Bernie has benefited from more super pac and dark money spending than Clinton, by a large margin. He also has affiliated PACs, which have, along with his campaign, been cited for repeated campaign finance violations. He pretends the issue is about personal virtue, ignoring all the spending done on his behalf, yet his campaign doesn't even follow the already existing and all to meager campaign finance law. ( I link to a number of sources in this post that provide evidence for the preceding paragraph. http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=1258143. And https://gobling.wordpress.com/2016/02/13/fec-hits-bernie2016-with-campaign-finance-violations/ $23 million is not a minor amount of money).

Another key argument for his campaign is corporate accountability, yet he applies that only to one area of the economy: Wall Street.
He voted to grant immunity to gun corporations. After first denying that vote in an early debate, then saying he would rethink the position, he championed his vote in the debate just prior to Michigan. In addition to being all over the map on the issue, I interpret his last debate statement on the vote as a message to the rural Michigan voters. The NRA tweet the next day expressing support for his position helped in that regard. He played the politics of it masterfully, but I find the position reprehensible, not only because of my views on gun control but because it contradicts his claims to stand as an anti-establishment candidate against corporate excess.

He denounces military spending while voting for pet projects for VT (the f-35). Again, a great difference between rhetoric and behavior.

Then single payer. After disclosing to the press in 2010 that single payer was a nonstarter in the Obamacare debates, he now has built a campaign around attacking Clinton for not embracing a policy he himself said would only have gotten 8 or 9 votes, and that was when the Democrats had a majority in both houses. Now they are the minority in both.

I think he believes what he says about a political revolution, but that doesn't make it any more convincing. Turnout is not up from 2008. There is no indication that Bernie would receive the kind of voter support that would transform congress, as he claimed in his last debate. He has no answer as to how he will work with the existing congress. In other words, he has no plan to implement any of what he promises. I judge him lacking in credibility.

I also find highly disconcerting the fact he hasn't even assembled a foreign policy team and that he thinks it acceptable to pivot away from questions on foreign policy. That position might work for a candidate running to raise issues, but not for someone who seeks to actually be president. I want a president to be informed, engaged, and competent.

Another thing that really bothers me is his failure to take responsibility for his own votes. He blamed Clinton for mass incarceration but accepts no responsibility for his own vote for those laws. He announced it was a disgrace that Gitmo hasn't been closed, yet he himself voted on at least two occasions against closing it. How is it possible not to find that sort of thing questionable?

Bernie Sanders wants normal U.S.-Cuba relations but is fuzzy on details