Someone sent me the video of Bernie's hour-long town hall in Wisconsin

[Garrett78]

And this was my reaction:

Okay, I'm 11 minutes in and not sure I can take much more. Bernie's dismissal of the role racism (as well as sexism) played in this election is highly irritating. And he's simply wrong when he suggests most Trump supporters aren't bigots. As Ta-Nehisi Coates points out, "Studying the 2016 election, the political scientist Philip Klinkner found that the most predictive question for understanding whether a voter favored Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump was “Is Barack Obama a Muslim?”'

And make no mistake, xenophobia and anti-Muslim sentiment is racism at the root. Birtherism is racism at the root.

Not to mention the 25+ years of hatred that victimized Clinton. An article on that: "The deep disgust for Hillary Clinton..."

Clinton, of course, is white, but - as Coates points out - Democrats are associated with being on the side of people who aren't white. And the white backlash has been building for the last 8 years. Survey after survey demonstrates that *many* Trump supporters subscribe to bigoted beliefs.

Then there's the FBI's interference, Russian hacking and a pathetic mainstream media (ratings-focused obsession with spectacle, and promotion of false equivalencies in the name of some twisted sense of what constitutes "balance&quot . An article on the media that I highly recommend: http://www.newsweek.com/neil-buchanan-cruel-crooked-caricature-doomed-clinton-520125

And, last but not least, voter suppression enabled by the Shelby County v. Holder decision of 2013. An article on its effects: https://thinkprogress.org/2016-a-case-study-in-voter-suppression-258b5f90ddcd#.xhx6u325x

Plus, I can't rule out election fraud. Voter fraud, in spite of Trump's claims, is practically unheard of. Election fraud, though, I'm not so sure about. I want a paper trail and I want every ballot counted by a human being...and checked by another human being...and re-checked by another human being. This is serious business with serious consequences. We can't mess around.

In spite of all that, Clinton received nearly as many votes as Obama received in 2012 and nearly 3 million more votes than Trump received.

And and and....Clinton won among the working class. She won among individuals making $50,000 or less per year. She won among those who said 'the economy' was their top concern. If a segment of the *white* working class has much different priorities or desires than the working class as a whole, one need not think too long and hard to determine why that might be.

And anyone who thinks Trump is a "populist" is batshit crazy. Seriously, Donald Trump a populist? You've got to be kidding me. I suppose some actually believe he'll magically force corporations to bring jobs back from overseas, but he won't. Also, manufacturing in the US is at an all-time high. The problem is automation means far fewer people are needed, and wages have been stagnant for decades. What the US needs to invest in are new green industries, while raising the minimum wage and putting a cap on earnings. Plus things like paid family and medical leave, free community college, affordable college, universal health care, etc. Take a page from Germany's book. Germany also did a massive amount of outsourcing, but it's what else Germans have done that separates them from Americans.

You know, the very sorts of things Clinton campaigned on. Clinton campaigned on a very progressive economic message, the most progressive economic message ever carried by a major party candidate. And, yes, that was partly due to the influence Sanders had in the primary and on crafting the Democratic Party platform.

But Clinton's message was drowned out by the media. Issues were drowned out, period.

By the way, let me add that major proponents of free trade (including ones from the Rust Belt) won re-election by a greater margin than Trump won by. And the re-election rate of incumbents was even greater than normal. So, the anti-trade and anti-establishment narratives don't hold up to scrutiny. No, my friend, this was about bigotry first and foremost.

And the electoral college is a vestige of slavery.

As for so-called "political correctness," there's another term for it: human decency. It's not "political correctness" that objects to sexually assaulting women, to making misogynistic remarks, to suggesting most Mexican immigrants are rapists and drug dealers, to engaging in housing discrimination (as Trump has a long history of doing), etc. Those things aren't just politically incorrect. They're simply inhumane and, in some cases, illegal.

Venting over...for now. We'll see if I can stomach the rest of Bernie's misguided, self-serving lecture.