Better question: Where was your candidate in the Eighties and Nineties?

[Ken Burch]

HRC was in Arkansas and various corporate helping found and build the DLC(described aptly by Jesse Jackson as "Democrats for the Leisure Class&quot , the group that led the fight to get the Democratic Party to totally abandon workers, the poor, and the cause of peace.
She was on the WalMart board of directors, getting a huge salary for attending board meetings and introducing mildly progressive resolutions she knew the rest of the board would always reject.
And she was in Washington, losing a winnable fight for universal healthcare, helping support the re-election of the anti-left government of Nicaragua(the government that had only come to power in 1990 because the U.S. had spent a decade starving people out with an economic embargo and terrorizing them with an army of fascist bandits), pushing the Democratic Party away from doing anything that might involve working with progressive activists, helping get NAFTA through Congress when almost 70% of the voters and virtually all Democratic voters wanted it stopped, defending DADT and DOMA, and doing nothing, even behind the scenes, to even try to talk Bill out of signing off on vicious right-wing attacks on social programs.

In the same period, Bernie was doing an excellent job running Burlington, was endorsing and campaigning for Jesse Jackson and supporting the Rainbow Coalition, was fighting successfully to build a progressive alternative to Reaganism, getting elected and re-elected to Congress as a democratic socialist from a historically Republican state, defending the people of the Democratic base in an era when the national party was abandoning us, and maintaining an impeccable record of personal incorruptibility.

What happened in 1964 may not matter, but what happened in 1984 and 1994 sure as hell does.

[FreakinDJ]

1. Corp lawyer for Walmart and then promoting NAFTA

Quite a resume

[Cali_Democrat]

2. Elizabeth Warren was a Republican and voting for Reagan

in the 1980's.

Are we prepared to throw her under the bus too?

[Ken Burch]

4. HRC supporters like yourself were using that against Warren when it looked like she might run.

I'd love to hear your argument as to why we should let it go that HRC spent years fighting to kick labor and the poor and peace and justice activists to the curb by building the DLC, by pushing the party massively to the right when we never needed to go that route-a route that inevitably had to cause something like the Nader thing to happen, since we were no longer keeping faith with what we were supposed to fight for and the people we existed to defend...the dispossessed and the voiceless.

[Bluenorthwest]

22. Ken, we have covered this and you should know better. You were abusive toward

me and others who dared to not support Warren because of the 80's and 90's and because of her being a Republican during the 7 years of Republican denial of AIDS. This OP does not even mention AIDS while talking about the 80's and the 90's and that answers my question 'where were YOU in the 80's and 90's?' and the answer is not joining the movement in the streets.

[Ken Burch]

28. The question I posed in the OP is where the candidates were in the Eighties.

Not where people supporting them were. But, for the record:

In that decade, I was supporting Jesse Jackson(the ONLY Democratic candidate in '84 and '88 who supported LGBTQ rights), testifying before the City and Borough of Juneau Assembly in support of the anti-discrimination ordinance, and mourning friends who had died of AIDS. I attended events in solidarity with people with AIDS at the time. None of which deserves the Nobel Freaking Peace Prize or anything, but you did just assume the worst about me without having any information about my actual history.

In my posts about Warren and LGBTQ issues, I never meant anything personal towards you(though I can see I did cause harm). I was reacting(and in retrospect too harshly)to those who, from what I could tell, were trying to push Warren out of the race because they wanted HRC to have no opposition at all for the nomination(at that point, nobody was even seriously discussing the idea that Bernie would run). I was convinced at that point that there was the real possibility that HRC would be the only candidate, which would mean we'd be going back to the dead zone of the Nineties again as I saw it. It simply didn't occur to me that people would be calling Warren out for reasons unrelated to support for HRC. I got that wrong.

I agree with you that Warren needs to address her bad political choices in the Eighties and Nineties. My only objection to the way LGBTQ issues were used in regards to her was in the context HRC supporters trying to protect HRC from a progressive challenger. I regret anything I said to you that was personally hostile(don't mean to sound vague about that, but I actually don't remember what I specifically said to you). I was clearly out of line if what I said then still caused that much anger in you. For that, I am sorry.

[bvf]

8. Do you know for a fact she voted for Reagan?

If so, feel free to provide a link or two that demonstrates this in no uncertain terms.

If not, admit as much.

[onehandle]

13. Oh, the Internets.

Hilarious

[bvf]

17. I'll mark you both down as a "no," then.

[onehandle]

3. My candidate was a Democrat in 1984 and 1994.

An actual Democrat. Not a democratsocialwhatever.

Welcome to Democratic Undergroud.

[Ken Burch]

5. She was a Democrat in registration only.

No one in the DLC has any real right to claim to be a Democrat. it's never Democratic to be anti-union and support cuts in social services, or to push for trade deals when they only benefit the 1%(Al Gore's "side agreements" turned out to be meaningless).

In building the DLC, HRC proved that nothing Bobby Kennedy, Cesar Chavez, or Martin Luther King ever fought for mattered to her anymore. You can't fight for the powerless AND argue that Democrats should seek corporate and Wall Street support.

Bernie was always a Democrat in spirit. He worked outside the party because, in the Eighties and Nineties, progressives weren't welcome (the way Jesse and the nuclear freeze and Central American solidarity movements were treated by the party proved that). And in any case, he has put the party issue to rest by caucusing with Democrats in the House and Senate throughout his career in Washington.

BTW(re; your avatar), the Beatles were for peace. They would never support a hawk for the U.S. presidency.

[HoneychildMooseMoss]

6. In 1984, I don't think she was even a Democrat in registration

because she was in Arkansas, and from what I've heard Arkansas does not require party registration.

[Ken Burch]

7. Good point.

That was also the case in Georgia in the 1940's and 1950's, which discredits the 'MLK was a Republican" meme the Right was pushing a few years ago.

[onehandle]

11. 'Good point?'

Wow. Very sad.

[Ken Burch]

14. How so? I was just acknowledging the factual accuracy of that post. n/t.

[onehandle]

10. Swing and a miss.

Hillary became a registered Democrat in college.

So petty.

[HoneychildMooseMoss]

15. When she moved to Arkansas, she had to change her voter registration

And shortly after that, she went to work for the Rose Law Firm.

I read here where she actually defended Arkansas power utilities against residential rate payers. I checked into that and found it was true. In 1976, there were several attempts to have ballot initiatives in various Arkansas cities that would allow residentiai utility ratepayers to get a break on their rates. The only one that was allowed to go forward was in Little Rock. It passed, and residential ratepayers there would have gotten a break on their rates at a time when inflation was a big problem, but because of Hillary, the initiative was declared unconstitutional.

I was in Fayetteville, Arkansas at the time, and we were one of the other cities that was supposed to have the ballot initiative for reduced residential rates. Only Little Rock got it, but we in Fayetteville were looking at what would happen in Little Rock because we wanted to try again. However, we were dismayed to see that the Little Rock initiative was overruled by the courts. At the time, I had no idea that Hillary was involved in the case against the ratepayers, because at the time she was not well known in the state. It was only through other posters here that I learned that she had been directly involved in helping to overturn a ballot initiative that was designed to help the ordinary citizen.

So you tell me, would a real, down-to-earth Democrat fight for corporations against average citizens?

[beam me up scottie]

19. "So petty"? You mean like your calling Bernie a "democratsocialwhatever"?

[Kalidurga]

9. So can you explain what a Democrat is and what values they should promote?

[onehandle]

12. No.

Last edited Fri Dec 25, 2015, 08:30 PM - Edit history (1)

As in 'I refuse.'

[murielm99]

16. An essay question?

I wonder if you get extra credit. I wonder if he is asking because so many of bernie's new fans here have no idea themselves.

[Scootaloo]

26. obviously. n/t

[Ken Burch]

29. If you can't explain what a Democrat is and what a Democrat should stand for

What difference does it make to you if a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination had ALWAYS been a Democrat or not?

Here's a thought experiment for you:

If there was a two-way race for president in which David Duke was the Democratic presidential candidate and Barbara Lee was a progressive independent(let's assume for the sake of argument that there wasn't a Republican, to start with)would you back Duke just because of his party status? Even though, if elected, he would be fighting against everything the Democratic Party stands for? Even though, if elected, it would probably be impossible to deny him renomination (assuming he even continued to allow elections)due to the total control an incumbent president has over her or his party's nomination process in the year that incumbent seeks re-election?

[cali]

23. Why is simply being a Democrat so vitally important? Joe Lieberman was

a dem in that period. So was Ben Nelson and a host of others. Merely being a dem, doesn't magically mean someone is good on policy.

[cui bono]

25. There's really no point to being Democratic Underground if the Dems are now moderate Republicans.

What's the point of supporting Dems who enact and support Republican policies? Obama is a moderate Republican. So is Hillary. So was Reagan. So that's what you want?

Why not support the person who truly supports the Democratic Parties supposed ideals and principles? Or are you glad that the Dem party has moved so far right it is now moderate Republican? Are you glad that by continually moving to the center that it gives the GOP the room to move to the extreme right? That's what you are advocating by touting rules rather than policy stances.

Why not support someone who is strong on all Democratic values and who really wants to save the democracy from the banksters?

.

[bigwillq]

18. Couldn't legally vote until 1996

Didn't really have a candidate back then but I never liked Bill Clinton.

I voted for Perot in my first presidential election in Nov. 1996. Looking back, I would not have voted for Perot again. But, looking back, I still would not have voted for Bill Clinton.

Oh, lookey, 20 years later another Clinton is running. The more things change, the more they stay the same. In politics, that statement is so true.

[Recursion]

20. In the 80s, undergrad and law school and working for Gary Hart

In the 90s, he was on the Baltimore City Council, and at the very end of the decade was elected Mayor of Baltimore.

[Ken Burch]

21. Well, thanks for adding that. Didn't actually know what O'Malley had been doing in those years.

Happy season.

[JustAnotherGen]

27. Thanks - saved me the trouble

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

24. All one has to do to be an avid Hillary fan is to develop the ability to forget.

Forget the wars. Forget the deaths. Forget the torture. Forget the collaboration with the Republicans. Forget the collaboration with the corporations. Forget the pursuit of whistle blowers. Forget the poor. Forget the persecuted. Forget the police state.

Again, we are told to be patient. That the other side is worse.

Again, we are told to shut up and vote for the candidate who can win and ignore their record.

And, again, we are told that "this time it will be different."