NY Times: "Bernie Or Bust" Is Bonkers (link fixed)

[gollygee]

I voted for Bernie here in Michigan, but I agree 100% with this. There are important differences between Bernie and Hillary, but either is WAY WAY WAY better than any of the Republcian choices.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/31/opinion/campaign-stops/bernie-or-bust-is-bonkers.html?

The New York Times Upshot even pointed out last May that Sanders and Clinton “voted the same way 93 percent of the time in the two years they shared in the Senate” and in many of the cases in which Clinton voted differently from Sanders, “she voted with an overwhelming majority of her colleagues, including Republicans.”

That doesn’t mean that those differing votes weren’t significant. They were. As the Upshot put it, the 31 times they disagreed “happened to be” on some of “the biggest issues of the day, including measures on continuing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an immigration reform bill and bank bailouts during the depths of the Great Recession.”

And yet those differences hardly bring either candidate anywhere close to being as frightening as the specter of the real estate developer assuming the office of president of the United States.

Elections are about choices, not always between a dream candidate and a dreaded one, but sometimes between common sense and catastrophe. Progressives had better remember this come November, no matter who the Democratic nominee is.

[liberal_at_heart]

1. Trashing thread.

[arcane1]

2. Link isn't working n/t

[merrily]

4. You say that like it's a bad thing.

[Human101948]

3. Page not found

check that link.

I was wondering who wrote that screed.

[merrily]

7. Bonkers, crazy, morons, idiots--they sure know how to sweet talk unity out of Bernie supporters,

don't they?

Support us, you asshats!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=1621965

[gollygee]

8. It doesn't say Bernie supporters are bonkers

It says the decision to go with "Bernie or Bust" is bonkers.

Plenty of Bernie supporters know better than to do that.

[merrily]

10. You missed the point. It's about party unity, not about who is getting called names.

The objective is party unity, which, let's not be coy, is a nicer way of Hillary supporters saying "Vote for Hillary in 2016, no matter what" because they have assumed for years that she will be the 2016 nominee. I hope with all my being that the fix that has been in since 2008 will fail, but that is another story.

For party unity, no one needs to win over the Bernie supporters who are already resigned to biting a bullet or holding their respective noses or whatever they have to do to vote for Hillary, if she is the nominee. The Bernie supporters they need to win over for "party unity" ARE the "Bernie or Bust" supporters and only the "Bernie or Bust" supporters ("Bernie or Bust" being imprecise shorthand for those who will not vote for Hillary no matter what, whether they go Green or other party or stay home or leave the top of the ticket blank or write in Bernie).

I do understand the distinction between "You are bonkers" and "Your decision is bonkers." Still, neither is likely to be useful in achieving party unity. Quite the opposite, in fact. IOW, though phrases like that are red meat to Hillary supporters, like those at DU, it's dumb, IMO, because it is likely to be nearly 100% counter-productive to the stated goal of party unity.

Then again, counter-productive shaming the opposition has been true of almost all Third Way attempts at party unity that I know of, Rahm being one of the more famous examples.

[edgineered]

9. It is all a matter of perspective.

When a Clinton supporter applies for a job doing idiot work and is told that they are over qualified, they take it to be a good thing. In actuality one would be too much of an idiot to be overqualified for the task of idiot work. Just saying.

[cosmicone]

5. It is BONKERS

and I don't need NYT to tell me that.

[reformist2]

6. It may be "bonkers", but it's a reality Dems need to think about when choosing their candidate....

[merrily]

11. It depends on whether you base your decision on the short term, meaning the very

next 4 to 8 years, or whether you based your decision on trying to reverse the rightward march of this nation that has been occurring since perhaps the Carter administration (much as I love former President Carter, he and a Democratic Congress were more pro-corporate than FDR or LBJ--if you don't count war as the ultimate pro-corporate measure).