forjusticethunders
forjusticethunders's JournalTell me why me and almost everyone else in my age group should trust Hillary.
Why should I believe that Hillary is the best candidate for progressive change, since you all want to gloat so badly. Why should I believe that she believes in leftist ideals as opposed to "saying whatever will get me through an election"
I think we need to face facts regarding Bernie as a candidate
I believe Bernie is a superior candidate on policy to Hillary Clinton. I believe his economic platform has a broad appeal to every single working-class American. I think America needs to move to the left and fast (people don't realize how right-wing our political scene until you start looking overseas).
But elections are about winning, and winning is, not just about policy (sadly), but about tone, communication, packaging and messaging. Bernie Sanders is terrible at this stuff. It's his policy and platform that is driving the enthusiasm, not the candidate himself. Run Obama with Bernie's platform and he'd be unstoppable because Obama is a communicator and Bernie is not. I'm not a voter who is really concerned with tone but even I'm having a weekly cringe moment every week from his campaign. He's just not ready for a national campaign, and there's honestly no excuse.
I honestly think he has a bunch of advisors who are from the Reddit crowd who bitch about "identity politics" and "SJWs" and think he doesn't have to specifically talk to demographic groups because his economic message will carry the day (Tad Devine just seems like the kind of guy who's posting on Reddit about how SJWs are oppressing him). And hey, you can think that, I think class is the big driver of everything wrong in American society, but that doesn't mean you don't have to speak to the specific concerns of groups, talk to them in their communities, learn about them. I think stuff like representation is sometimes overblown, but it does matter, and even when Bernie looked strong on these issues, it was always reactive, not proactive. Either way, he's not communicating well, and he's either not tweaking his message or he's flailing while trying to tweak it.
I hope future progressive campaigns learn from this. You can sell a progressive economic platform, but not the way Bernie has done. I still hope he wins, but his severe shortcomings as a candidate have become more and more apparent as the process has gone along.
My friend became a new Bernie supporter, but in a dark set of circumstances
Last night, one of my friends who isn't super politically informed but sort of leaned center-right (I've been working on that) told me she was going to support Bernie. That's great but the reason why is because this was after she tried to commit suicide using nail polish. Why did she do this? Because she is absolutely overwhelmed as a disabled person of color, dealing with the uncaring rightwing Texas bureaucracy trying to get some semblance of benefits, while trying to attend school, pay rent, and take care of her wife who suffers from seizures. You think the same old 51-49 shit that the DNC is trying to win with is gonna help her?
This is WHY we need a fucking political revolution, people. This Hillary Clinton status quo shit is literally killing people and those smug, comfortable, upper-middle class to rich people who don't have to worry about whether the rent is getting paid this month or having to choose between food and meds DO NOT FUCKING GIVE A SHIT. No conscience. No empathy. The system is killing people, here and worldwide, and all they care about is that a few Bernie Sanders supporters were rude on the internet. How privileged do you have to fucking be to think that way?
Anyway, I also have another request of the group - does anyone have any good, strong, concise materials not just on Bernie's platform, but on progressivism, Keynesian economics, and democratic socialism/social democracy in general? She's grown up in a conservative milleu and even though she's very open to rethinking it, I want something I can lean on to talk her through it.
Thanks in advance.
I sure love being whitesplained to.
Upper class white liberals (aka Hillary's support base) keep telling me how Hillary didn't REALLY mean black kids when she used words and language specificially used to dehumanize black kids and oh yeah Bernie voted for the bill too despite him having to choose between voting against something he hated and voting for something he really wanted (even so, it deserves a critical look).
I mean I'm to the left of the average progressive but I feel like I'm on RedState or one of the shittier parts of Reddit.
"Liberals" are defending mass incarceration and "get tough on (black and brown) crime"
rather than holding Hillary accountable. Either that or trying to say racist dogwhistle terms spewed from the mouths of extreme racist rightists are not racist dogwhistle terms. People trying to say "Hillary was just talking about the crime problem in the 90s" when everyone knew what a politican meant when they talked about "tough on crime" and the unstated assumption that black and brown people are inherently more criminal than white people (not true) or that the social dysfunction that led to these issues in black communities didn't have their genesis in policies that she and Bill not only supported, but expanded on (here's a fun fact, black and white crime is pretty much equal once you control for joblessness, it's just that black communities are just more heavily policed, and were hit harder by American deindustrialization).
And don't make this about Bernie; even if he wasn't in the race I would trust *ANYONE* except Biden over Hillary on this issue.
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BLM, Bernie and Hillary and key differences
When Black Lives Matter wants to get heard by a politician and uses disruptive tactics to get the message out:
Bernie Sanders has supporters who call the speakers rude and disruptive and condescendingly try to shunt black issues to the side.
Hillary Clinton herself calls the speakers rude and disruptive and condescendingly tries to shunt black issues to the side.
That's one key difference.
Another key differences is that racially insensitive white liberals who happen to support Sanders are not on the ballot.. However, Hillary Clinton *is* on the ballot.
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Gender: MaleHometown: Washington, DC
Home country: USA
Member since: Thu Jan 28, 2016, 04:01 PM
Number of posts: 1,151
