You ungrateful little twerp!
Okay, I'm done with name-calling now. I hope you are, too.
Your sniveling attack on Bernie Sanders on All in With Chris Hayes last night (April 4) made me furious! It was inevitable, of course, that Secretary Clinton and her surrogates would drag out the S-word under pressure. So Bernie Sanders is not a REAL Democrat, eh? A record of voting with Democrats in the range of 95-99% of the time is not enough for you? How many times has Senator Sanders helped carry Democrats over the finish line? I can guarantee you that Sanders' record leans far more Democratic (both big D and little d) than that of my (so-called) representative, Kurt Schrader, an Oregon Blue Dog who wears a D behind his name, but routinely votes with Republicans when it comes to the really important issues. (One site rates him as voting 84% with Democrats.)
[UPDATE ON 7/27/16 — Sen. Tim Kaine, Hillary’s VP pick, has voted with Democrats 92% of the time.]
Perhaps the problem, Mr. Carville, is your definition of Democrat. Sorry, James, but FDR – the only President to be elected four times! – would not recognize what you call the Democratic Party. The Roosevelts and their hard-working entourage of social democrats are the Democrats who gave us Social Security and labor protections, whose programs restored the Dust Bowl states to a more sane and sound agriculture, who used the government as a positive force to rebuild infrastructure and give people what Republicans call “the dignity of work.” And much, much more. The Living New Deal documents much of the work they did – accomplishments that today's Democratic Party refuses to claim! I propose a new bumper sticker:
LOVE SOCIAL SECURITY?
THANK FRANCES PERKINS!*
It must be particularly humiliating and galling for you, Mr. Carville, to see all those excited young people surrounding Sanders. They were supposed to be part of your coalition to crown Hillary Clinton as the first woman President of the United States, but for some reason they just won't get with the program! Many of us old women, who have been waiting decades to elect a female to the top job, are also jumping off your train. Why is that? Perhaps we don't appreciate being told by the likes of Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright that we have to vote for Hillary because she's a woman. Seems sexist to me. But give me an Eleanor Roosevelt and I'll vote for her in a heartbeat!
And here's something else: despite what she says on the campaign trail, I know in my heart that Hillary Clinton would be only too willing to sign over the future of the planet to corporate control under the TPP and other new trade deals. And she will approve the Keystone XL pipeline. Unfortunately under Bill Clinton and now Barak Obama, “D” has come to stand more for Disappointment than anything else. What we see in the comments sections of so many articles is acute disappointment that President Obama has failed to live up to his promises.
President Obama has done a lot of good things, but while I have respect for the President and his attempts to clean up the Bush mess, he first began disappointing Democrats when he decided to take PAC money, though he had promised not to. Once elected, he and his team completely lost interest in the people who elected him. My major gripe? Though Obama promised to include a public option in his health care plan, he made absolutely no attempt to fight for it; in fact, doctors and nurses supporting single-payer were arrested and effectively silenced during the deliberations. Then there was Rahm calling us 'f***ing retards'. And so on. Now the President is pushing the TPP to top off his legacy. It is profoundly puzzling to me why he would he want to be remembered as the president who gave corporations unlimited license to privatize everything and undermine our protective laws and institutions. WTF? Hillary Clinton embraces the Obama legacy and promises more of the same.
The young people supporting Bernie Sanders see his campaign as the last best hope to really change things. They have a sense of urgency about their future, which doesn't look very promising in light of climate change, social injustice, congressional constipation, politicians who believe we can bomb all our problems out of existence, and elites who are hoarding and hiding the capital that could be used to really make this country — and the world — thrive again. The kids have no time for incrementalism. While Secretary Clinton meets privately with Wall Street, the fossil fuel industry and Monsanto, Senator Sanders is speaking directly to the people and building a joyous and creative democratic movement.
We are tired of “No We Can't.” A better world is possible, and we want it.
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*FDR’s Secretary of Labor, #12 in the photo, which came from this site: www.ssa.gov/...