General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Sanders tanked Clinton. [View all]JCanete
(5,272 posts)independent population is? BTW, I'm just interested. I'm not claiming that its at a parity with white independents.
I'm not familiar with the Konst plan...is there a voter ID component? How is it stripping people of their right to vote?
As to the rest, I've tried to figure out how to respond to you. I don't have enough time to go through every single claim of yours right now. I looked at one of his gitmo votes. Were there more? Like I said, it is hard to make a determination about one piece of legislation, especially when it is a part of a huge piece of legislation. This was an amendment to a military spending bill about preventing money being appropriated to prisons to move prisoners from Gitmo to the states. Sanders makes a statement after his vote with most of the senate not to allow this, that he is in agreement with President Obama that Gitmo must be closed as fast as possible, but perhaps he had a problem with the uncertain conditions about how that money might be allocated. he certainly had a problem with the state of the prisoners, some of which having been accused of no crime. I think there was very legitimate concern about whether or not the solution to closing Gitmo was just to import it to the US and continue to house prisoners indefinitely....problem solved right? Totally better now that we're doing the same shit, different day, on US soil. It was a question of letting 10's of millions of dollars be used for such a purpose.
If you have a deep insight on this particular amendment and why it was a particularly bad one, by all means, I have no problem with disagreeing with my politicians. I have no problem with thinking Sanders was wrong on a vote. He had justifications, but then, yes, everybody will have justifications that they tell the public. But what cynical reasoning can you ascribe his vote? What could he possibly gain from a vote to prevent the closing of gitmo? It would make sense if he were already pandering to a particular audience or industry, . It would make sense if he had lobby or financial ties to something related to gitmo. It does not make any sense whatsoever if all he has is a certain line of rhetoric on the subject that he then chooses to contradict... because reasons.
Motives matter. If you can show me a plausible motive for his vote being based upon something other than his guiding principles and his understanding of the contents of the legislation, then by all means let me in on it. When a vote does coincide with funding of any kind, trust me, I want to know it. When it relates to pandering for fear of political backlash, I want to know it. What political backlash do you foresee Sanders getting for helping to get rid of Gitmo given his rhetoric about Gitmo already. Is it simply a mystery? Is he just a wild and crazy guy?
As to the comment about criticism...I was responding to somebody who had a problem with the fact that Sanders has disagreements with the Democratic party. It was apparently wrong for him to find fault with Dem party leadership. I didn't say anything about Clinton saying there should be no criticism. I was appreciating you agreeing with me that criticism is important and necessary.