Let's talk about the "left" online media.

As you may or may not know, I originally supported Bernie. Actually, to me he was a compromise. I generally got my news from places like Alternet, Counterpunch, Common Dreams, and other lefty news outlets. Places like DailyKos and Salon were *too moderate* for me. Coupled with social media, that all added up to create a picture of Hillary and the Democrats as sellouts, turncoats, and "DINOs" for their "abandonment of liberal politics". I read a lot of books from Chomsky and the like (who I certainly still respect). But all of that added up to a distrust of normal politics, a feeling that the system was "rigged" (gee where have you heard that before), that both parties were corporate (see above), that the Dems didn't really care about helping working people, etc,etc. Also that the media is rigged and biased, won't cover "real issues" for their "corporate masters" etc etc. Sound familiar?

When you hear this stuff from the Berners, this is why. They're getting their news and information from those kinds of sources. But more importantly, it's the tone. Not only does it portray mainstream Dems as sellouts for everything that even smacks of compromise, but it allows them to paint the progressive things they DO get done as "insufficient", "pandering", "token" or all kinds of other delegitmizers. This fires up the outrage, makes people feel fearful and angry, and rakes in the big bucks. So when Hillary, who is "establishment" because she's devoted her adult life to the Party, runs for President and has broad support within the Party, she gets smeared as being "coronated". Her progressive accomplishments are thrown under the mud because they weren't "big enough". Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders gets to hold a bunch of rallies, make a few progressive noises, and use "socialist" as an edge-lord label, and suddenly he's a rebel.

The one thing about this primary is that it brought me out of the echo chamber. When you start following and getting involved in real world politics, you can't stay in the echo chambers. Lefty media doesn't tell you that Hillary marched in Pride in the 90s, or that conservatives exist to block even the faintest hint of left politics., or that changing the political culture takes years, hell decades of work even if you're on the right side (just ask black people and LGBT people) They tell you that there are millions of nonvoters in each state who would turn out for far left policy (debatable, and turnout is a LOT more than that) and that elected Democrats don't make the country Europe because they're sold out to corporations and only care about enriching themselves.

So in the long run, I think the kind of media we have on the "Left" will continue to be a problem going forward. Bernie Sanders gaining so much traction despite being heavily unqualified, lacking a mature temperament, not truly understanding movement politics and being and short on policy detail wasn't an accident, it was a product of misinformation from an "independent" media designed not to inform the public, but to outrage them to generate more ad buys. I know that from experience.

As in so many other things, Hillary works to improve her shortcomings.

I never thought I'd see the day I'd be praising Hillary Clinton's twitter game

For the short to intermediate term, you will need white votes to address income inequality

Measures to address this will, if properly and fairly applied, disproportionately help Black and Brown people, because they are poorer in many ways, largely due to racism. Thus, white racism (both overt white conservative racism and covert white "liberal" racism) will do two things to those measures


- Cause these measures to be rejected and voted down by white people (aka, what actually happened)
- Cause these measures to be watered down or unevenly applied to limit the disproportionate benefit these programs would present to a disproportionately economically insecure group.

Thus, systemic racism has to be addressed first to even make anti-inequality politically possible or executable.This is ONLY talking about economics, not social/legal/medical inequality that money can't really fix. This is where i say "you can give me a million dollars today and I might still get shot by a cop tomorrow"

Good fucking lord, what the FUCK are these kids "overcoming"?

Things that are conservative now according to Berners

Things that are conservative now:

Planned Parenthood

Human Rights Campaign

Hillary Clinton

Gay rights activists

Black people

Math

Logic

t h i s.

Progressive political economy was Southern Strategied into lazy n***** welfare queen economics by Nixon and Reagan and the Clintons had to deal with that reality. People don't understand how powerful the RW propaganda is. Imo, the right-wing propaganda apparatus starting in the 70s is the most onerous, insidious propaganda campaign in modern history, excepting that of North Korea and certain periods like the Cultural Revolution. Even the Nazis couldn't fully brainwash the German population, many of them really were following orders, on pain of a bullet in the brain, but "obey or i shoot you in the head" isn't an example of the propaganda working. Stalinism only worked on a minority of hardcore tankies and bureaucrats. I'm not being hyperbolic, right-wing ideology is that mind-warping. And with so many of this country's voters warped by this, they had to make concessions or risk a total defeat.

Like you said, we are AT a point where we can finally put Reagan in his coffin and nail the lid shut forever. But it's not going to happen without a massive, grassroots, intersectional movement, and Bernie couldn't do it. I actually don't think he's *personally* unelectable (certainly not against Trump, I don't think he's stronger than Hillary but if Hillary has a 95% chance of beating Trump, Bernie has an 85% chance) but he's not the right guy to build the movement to push and cement that progressive change.

I get what you're trying to say, racially insensitive as it is

You want what white people (specifically white males) had in the 50s, except presumably extended to everyone. And that's a nice ideal. That was as close to socialism as we were going to get and we tried to build on it in the 60s. That is a laudable goal. BUT you are ignoring the fact that white people themselves threw it away. They killed the goose laying the golden egg because they would have to share the eggs with non-whites, non-males, non-straights, as well as peaceniks and other non-conformists and they couldn't get over their own bigotry because they traded the real wages to feed their children for the psychological wage of feeling high, mighty and superior over "those people".

We must defeat and destroy racism and oppression in this country before we can ever have socialism. Socialism cannot win until the white working class and black working class and the Hispanic working class and the gay and the straight and the trans and the working class of every single identity join hands to remake society, and that won't happen as long as white workers are willing to trade real wages for psychological ones.

I've come to believe Hillary is far more progressive than she may appear

But she (and Bill for that matter) has had to play the game to get to this point, because if she doesn't then the Republican wins and we get more fascism. How much of her failings from a progressive view are the result of that? I'd daresay a lot. Nevertheless, she's certainly advocating a lot of progressive things right now, both socially and economically. Is she sincere? I'd like to think so. Yes, she does engage in a lot of noncommittal lawyerspeak which can be frustrating as hell, and i don't think very many of her supporters think she's perfect, and a lot of us would like to see her evolve further on several issues, but again that is part of the game and the only way to change that is to change the game, and not electing her over Trump might change the game...to something even worse.

The key thing is that Hillary is *persuadable*. Yes she evolves on issues when it's politically expedient (or rather, she takes public stands on issues when it's politically safe/ expedient, I'm sure the woman who marched in a Pride Parade in the 90s had no real issue with marriage equality at any point). But what is she evolving in response to? The people. Triangulation works both ways, after all. If she seems too friendly with neoliberalism (which I think she is), it's because the forces combating neoliberalism are too weak. Yes, it's more satisfying to say you are not compromising on certain progressive stands, but if you end up being stuck at 8.75 because you wouldn't budge from 15, how many workers have you really helped?

Furthermore, a lot of my support for Hillary is based on her intersectional coalition, which I'm actually impressed with seeing her starkly opposite 2008 campaign (which was naked white identity politics). Revolutions aren't made by individual leaders but by grassroots coalitions. And in America, nearly EVERY single revolutionary movement since this country's founding was spearheaded by people of color. And the latest one? By LGBT people. Progressive unions are getting behind her. Organizations that have fought for progress for decades are getting behind her. The fact that Hillary isn't as progressive as I'd like her to be is not as relevant in the face of this reality. Yes, I am all about class struggle but dismissing this coalition's needs and concerns as "identity politics" and then claiming the mantle of socialism and progressivism is a blind spot at best and an insult at worst. And keep in mind, her coalition is WELL to the left of where she's generally been. Support for socialism and progressivism scales with how black and brown and non-straight people are. So if Hillary betrays this coalition, she'll lose.

Does it matter that she needed vocal opposition before she came out against the TPP? Does it matter she flip-flopped in the right direction? Maybe. After all, there is the threat she can always flip flop back. But she does still want to win 2 terms, and i assume she does want a legacy. Does it matter her husband signed NAFTA? Yes. Does it matter that she praised Kissinger? Hell yes it does. Does it matter what happened overseas? Yes, I oppose those aspects of her policy and I think those are what we should pressure her the most to change; her hawkish inclinations are a product of the 90s and a product of possibly needing to overcompensate for sexism. At the same time though, you can't lionize Franklin Delano "Internment and Strategic Bombing" Roosevelt, John F "Bay of Pigs" Kennedy, and Lyndon Baines "Vietnam" Johnson and then have Hillary's comparatively lesser moral failings be dealbreakers for you. I understand why it's easy to think she's a neoliberal shill, because to be relevant in American politics, you sort of have at least make a few neoliberal shill noises. The question is, what are you going to do about it? We have a politician that is clearly willing to compromise and change her views based on the political winds. But that means the task falls to us to direct those political winds, rather than wait for a savior. Hillary is not a savior either, but she is ultracompetent, intelligent, and even though it often gets masked by the insanity of traditional American foreign policy, she has a strong sense of empathy and caring, which shows in the reaction of people who work with her, i.e "I'd crawl over broken glass for her", paraphrased". And as of today she's promoting and campaigning on progressive policy (far beyond even 2008, when she was to the left of Obama on many issues). It's up to us to keep her that way.

So we have a mostly white group of disgruntled voters

Alleging that the candidate who won a vast majority of POC votes won by voter fraud and is thus illegitimate.

Wasn't this the far-right conservative position in 2012? And now its the"progressive" position in 2016?

West made an arguable criticsm of Obama which is one thing

The terms he used were absolutely vile dogwhistle politics that he thought he could get away with because he's black, especially since his primary audience is white people.

Especially since it betrays a complete lack of understanding of the system that we live in, let alone any program for changing it. Obama fighting basically alone against the American deep state (as opposed to not being a pure neocon like Bush?) At BEST he's marginalized. At worst, well, I won't say but you know what I'm trying to say.