the criticism is really coming from the right. So pay no heed to anything that appears to Clinton's left. The reductionism of it is downright insulting, paiting the party's left wing as gullible and impressionable individuals without critical thinking skills.

So it should come as no surprise that they are still doing it.

If not, WE 'd have to start despairing.

... until it was too late. Which is exactly what happened.

with Clinton over issues we believe are vital, and deep concerns about her ethics. Sorry if I'mbeing presumptuous in speaking for others. Clinton supporters are just scrabbling desperately for anything, and there isn't much. They seem way more into personality than issues.

like on the playground, and hope for the best. I am not suggesting that HRC is a bully, but the billionaires that support her certainly are.

How people can rationalize that the status quo won't throw more American children into poverty, I can't imagine. Why would someone support Goldman-Sachs over the poor, the vets, and our seniors?

Issue with her:

Lack of public stance on TPA and the TPP.

Her economic policy. (Clintonomics)

Her foreign policy. (IWR vote, wanting to arm the Syrians etc...)

And to top it all off, I just don't trust her to stay true to anything she says.

"desperate" because they dare to point out that Bernie Sanders is not a perfect candidate.

You get what you pay for.

someone that hasn't betrayed us?

could you refresh my memory. i'm a bernie supporter.

sorry -- it was the iraq war vote, right?

It wasn't just a mistake, it was calculated to win favor with the neocons and MIC.

i supported obama. things got real nasty here back then with the hillary supporters and the obama supporters. someone recently said it's going to be worse this time around.

They will pull out all stops. The can not let a progressive win. The Swiftboating has already started. But I have confidence that the people will see thru their dirty tricks. The people want someone with integrity.

Either way, a true dereliction of duty on her part. Then, not having really considered the evidence (we are told), she gets up in the Senate and delivers a rousing speech in favor of the IWR. Was she wrong or lying? Either way, she should have been disqualified from higher office.

Iraq War vote should permanently disqualify her from POTUS and she's damned lucky she's not facing a war crimes tribunal for her vote.

If Hillary had voted NO more than once while in the Senate when the votes were taken the US still would have invaded Iraq. How can you possibly arrive at the opinion that the Iraq invasion was all Hillary Clinton's fault?

history's biggest dupe of all times or something far, far worse.

Thanks for clearing that up.

On Mon Jun 15, 2015, 03:05 AM an alert was sent on the following post:

Are You On Drugs?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6837772

REASON FOR ALERT

This post is disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate.

ALERTER'S COMMENTS

Disagree for God's sakes, don't accuse a poster of being on drugs.

You served on a randomly-selected Jury of DU members which reviewed this post. The review was completed at Mon Jun 15, 2015, 03:20 AM, and the Jury voted 2-5 to LEAVE IT.

Juror #1 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: Sorry, not good to ask if someone is on drugs, imo. Even though many personal insults are a Leave that are far more egregious.


Juror #2 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Are you fucking kidding me? The response was to this " She has the blood of 1,000,000 innocent Iraqi civiians dripping from her hands. Her

Iraq War vote should permanently disqualify her from POTUS and she's damned lucky she's not facing a war crimes tribunal for her vote." WTF!?

Over the top post. The response was sound. "If Hillary had voted NO more than once while in the Senate when the votes were taken the US still would have invaded Iraq. How can you possibly arrive at the opinion that the Iraq invasion was all Hillary Clinton's fault?"
Juror #3 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: A strange post, but I wouldn't ban it.
Juror #4 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #5 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: Agreed. I'm bawling over the sadness at DU tonight but this Alert has made me laugh. What possesses some people?
Juror #6 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Seriously, alerter?
Juror #7 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given

Thank you very much for participating in our Jury system, and we hope you will be able to participate again in the future.

We need your voice here.

in an aggressive war, and that should be considered disqualifying from higher office. Yes, she has "blood on her hands" for that and the regime change operations she advocated for as Secretary of State. Do you want more of the same? Are you on drugs?

You are of course saying that VP Biden is not qualified for his office, and that our 04 nominee had blood dripping from his hands when I voted for him, but I have to assume you skipped the last 3 blood dripping elections.
There is a creepy edge to such extreme rhetoric being aimed at Biden and Kerry. Oh that's right, you only did that to Clinton, as if there was something different about her compared to those two men.

estimation. Kerry is the one who famously said in Colorado Springs that he would have voted to invade Iraq even had he known there were no WMDs. You can't get much more dumb-ass than that, imo. Biden presided over the Senate Judiciary Commitee that gave us Clarence Thomas (and allowed Anita Hill to be slimed). Q.E.D.

I like Bernie Sanders, but c'mon, the primary will be over by March at the latest.

Her motives are so putrid that she can't even hide it. There is just a natural dislike and distrust of her that she cannot mask. We need a likeable candidate. And her selfish agenda has prevented other from joining in because she has crowned herself the inevitable candidate.

...you got a ton of "truthiness" in that post.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

to launch an illegal invasion that destroyed Iraq and our lower classes. Senator Sanders has integrity, the bane of conservatives.

...who you claim is the "bane" of a plurality of them?

The way to draw reasonable moderates and conservatives with integrity away from voting for Republicans is to persuade them, not insult them.

You also seem to be confusing the actions of Bush with those of Hillary. That explains a lot, actually.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

We define our own reality.

Where does yours come from?

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

You really think Scott Walker will win the Repub nomination? You really think Jeb is that far behind? We all know the powers that be want Bush and Clinton as they are proven collaborators and the Clintons are stated to be honorary Bush family members. Only a fool would trust anyone associated with the Bush syndicate. No one wants nepotism either and we would be stupid to cede that campaign advantage over Jeb by nominating our own crony. That's reality to me. Reality isn't a snapshot in time. It's fluid and dynamic. A static viewpoint is short sighted. No one had Obama winning early on either. I do believe we short changed ourselves by limiting possible candidates but I blame Hillary's camp for that and her self-entitled demands of inevitability. Quite a hole we have dug ourselves into. I will be voting for Bernie or maybe O'Malley. If she publicly belittles and shames Bush that would be good but don't expect anything like that from those bedfellows. Her ties to the Bush family are disgusting beyond words.

The top three candidates are Bush, Rubio, and Walker. Walker would absolutely win in a landslide if there weren't literally a dozen other candidates from the kook wing of the GOP, because kookery is what their angry increasingly senile base is all about these days.

But back to Bernie. It's pretty funny watching you arguing on behalf of the institutional power of being the "grown up" candidate, as opposed to a "tell 'em what you really think" gadfly, for the GOP race - and yet somehow imagine that voters are going to turn away from Hillary Clinton for the exact same reason.

I guarantee you that if Bernie was running more than double the preference nationally over Hillary, you'd be crowing about it. But he's not. And further, Hillary is beating the pants off him even after having been a national figure for 20+ years, with all the crap that the GOP and the hard left throws at her.

Hillary is the default Democratic candidate. She's known. She'd liked. People have a have a reason not to vote for her. Do you really think after having been accused of: 1) murdering a U.S. ambassador, 2) running cocaine flights out of Little Rock, 3) Committing Land Fraud, 4) Breaking some (made up) law around having a private email account, that anything you're going to come up with will turn people off?

No. Bernie's campaign isn't intended to actually win. It's intended to pull her slightly to the left, and I'm really not terribly upset with that, all in all.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

I don't expect Bernie to win a general election but only because the word socialist is synonymous with his name whether it's fair or not. I do not believe the Clinton conspiracy theories although we all know full well now that the CIA has admitted protecting transport corridors for cocaine running for Ollie North, General Singlaub etc and we all saw what happened to Daniel Sheehan of the Christic Institute and Gary Webb who reported it. I met Sheehan...there is no way he committed suicide in his bathtub and Gary probably didn't shoot himself twice in the head. Even Ross Perot accused Bush of cocaine running. People can believe what they want...I heard the DC Madam a few years ago say publicly on TV that she would never commit suicide in case anyone found her dead after she implicated Sen Vitter and then Dick Cheney. She was found hung in her mother's shed in Florida weeks later. The point is that the facts are out on CIA drug running in the 80s much like Vietnam heroin dealing they pulled off. Arkansas was a major import point and Bush Sr was most definitely involved...he was buddy buddy with Clinton back then as he is now and its not a stretch to postulate that in the name of stopping communism's spread in South America that the Contras drug rites were protected by the Executive National Security Team who had to coordinate with governors too so no one would get busted. Everyone in Mexico knows thats how it works...to bad campesinos in El Salvador or Honduras know more about this than the American People do. I think O'Malley is a centrist Democrat similar to Hillary but I don't believe he is tainted...yet. So looks like my vote is heading in that direction. Too bad better candidates are too reluctant to run.

Our founders would want us to. Don't roll over and let them screw us more. How many American children must slide into poverty (currently 22% and increasing) before we decide to fight Goldman-Sachs and the billionaires?

We may lose this battle but we will do so fighting and not capitulating like we have for 30 years.

It's like watching the circus rolling down the hill outta town.

Sniff.

I simply cannot get over how he speaks to issues, SO many issues, that are important to me...and, I cannot even imagine that they are not vitally import to the vast majority of Americans. He speaks with honesty...integrity...and authenticity.

We have been turned into road kill by the rich, the corporations, the paid off politicians and other creeps and crooks.

It's getting to the point that we average Americans don't have much time left, to change the course of our country.

Bernie is my hope, for True Change.

but the Hillary "bashing" on DU is mostly the generic RW stuff with little merit of interest. Bernie has potential issues which may go public as the primary continues. Only a couple big ones seem to have surfaced so far.

I will respond to threads on issues, but like most DUers, I don't start threads just to put down a Democratic candidate.

Bernie has almost no chance to win a Presidential election. The little posts on DU are NOTHING like Bernie would face if the Koch bothers spent a billion on attacks on him.

For example, the "dual citizen" rumor would never go away - hell, the GOP likely would produce proof Bernie was a communist citizen of Israel and he worked as a spy. That's the kind of stuff you would see on FB, etc. Hillary has not "gone after" Bernie either.

Bernie has almost no budget or organization to defend himself. In most of the Sunbelt, no one has heard of Bernie Sanders. With minority, immigrants, and women he gets little traction. Bernie himself is changing his tune because of polls and things.

And you follow that up with "I don't start threads just to put down a Democratic candidate."

So you don't start threads; just rumors?

and almost always links or articles as evidence. Whenever possible, I find the best source on a topic available.

I have responded to others when I thought they were "bashing" with my arguments why it was old or irrelevant information.

I have argued my viewpoint on issues that I thought were important.

I have not started threads that "go after" Bernie or any candidates. I'm just pointing out that "rumors" and downright lies will be all over the place if Bernie gets the attention of the GOP operatives. Nothing on DU will come close.

The Diane Rehm citizen meme was apparently started as a "list" of legislatures with dual citizenship and it was posted on FB. That's typical "rumor" and it was discussed on DU at length. It's no more "real" than accusations that the Clinton's had Vince Foster murdered or whatever. You can read all those threads if you want...

And, the dual citizenship/loyalty bullshit ain't a "rumor", it's something bigots and anti-Semites have been doing to Jews since oh... about 1948.

a few have surfaced in minor threads so far.

There are links and arguments for all of these and likely more. Bernie has not really faced serious attacks yet.

Bernie's support for some of Israel's policies I might not agree with...and not a dual citizenship rumor...
Bernies support for the F35 based in Vermont...
Serious problems with the Robin Hood tax being a gold mine for big corporations, anti-union and anti-retirees...
Bernie's wife defrauding banks...and what he knew about it...
Some of Bernie's early writing and activism, the "sex article" is the only one mentioned so far as I know...
Bernie's support of the gun manufacturers has been a recent discussion...
Bernie's lack of action in Vermont for tuition-equity or similar measures like NY and Maryland have...

Well, you get the idea. I think some of these are just "bashing", and a few might have some substance. I figure that if Bernie and Hillary stick to the primary issues, DU would be better to do the same thing. I suppose someone could start a thread with a long paragraph and links to all of the above (off the top of my head) and others if they tried looking.

That would mean a few hundred angry posts for each one and very few changing their allegiance.

BTW, I will vote for the Democratic candidate. I admit that right now Hillary seems to be closest to my thinking, but I'd vote for Bernie or Marin if they were nominated.

Criticism over the F-35 won't go anywhere. Tuition equity instate is not a congressional matter. Inlile hillary, bernie has no conflct of interest issues. He never took a cent from gun manufacturers. I guess when you support a candidate as ethically compromised as hillary, you think they're all that bad. And there ia so much more i keep finding out about her; like her support for the murderous fucks who engineered the honduran coup. Disgusting doesn't begin to cover it.

"Bernie has almost no chance to win".....straight from the Corporate MSM playbook. Have you SEEN the crowds? Do you know he's had 200,000 contributors and 150,000 folks sign up to volunteer? And yet, your infallible crystal ball sez he can't win. I could swear that same lame argument was made about President Obama in 08'...

" The Dual citizen' rumor would never go away....well then, if the Big Bad Republicans are gonna lie about him we better pick someone they won't lie about "Benghazi/Whitewater/Clinton Foundation/Lesbianism/onandonandon....guess HRC's out too...any suggestions on who we might pick that FOX and the GOP won't smear? Rick Perry maybe?

"Hillary has not "gone after" Hillary...her surrogate Luis Gutierrez just yesterday pretended not to know Sanders name and said quote:"......I can't recall his name, the socialist. I'm not sure if he likes immigrants"....nah, no attack there... and wait until Bernie wins in Iowa and New Hampshire...Bill will say Bernie's campaign reminds him Joseph Stalin's..."Jesse Jackson" anyone?...

"With minorities immigrants and women he gets little traction." Virtually EVERY woman I know, many of whom love the idea of a woman in the White House, LOVES Bernie. Most of them think HRCs yesterday's corporate news. I go to school with Filipinos, Latinos, Asians,and Russian immigrants, and MOST of them are digging Mr. Sanders.

In short, your arguments against Sanders are nonsense.

See you in the primaries...

I can assure you I have plenty of good arguments for those and other issues. As I said, we will see what happens.

Crowds don't translate to votes. See: Howard Dean

He was done in by a roar intended to enthuse the crowd about being strong going on in NH. The establishment media successfully painted him as crazy.

One of those things that shouldn't have been but was an issue.

...and coming in a mediocre third.

And AFTER that there was his incompetent team in New Hampshire (I was there the weekend before, and I saw one of the worst run campaign in years) a few days later.

The "Dean Scream" is a convenient excuse for people who can't admit that their candidate did a lousy job all on his own.

Being labelled as crazy is, as it has always been, a catastrophe.

Hillary has been around, so there's not much new. She has an organization designed to refute the "old" stories anyway.

Bernie will face a bunch of "new" scandals, and they will become media friendly for a while. Bernie does not have the name recognition or organization to refute rumors and keep up with a well-funded attack. He was surprised on the Diane Rehm show, while he should have been prepared and expected it.

The dirty tricks have been around forever, but with the Koch dollars, Karl Rove trained operatives, etc., things are more media intense and lies spread more quickly than ever before.

This whole game will be over by March 1st.

I like Bernie Sanders, but he is way, way out of his league. He's no Hillary Clinton, and he's no Barak Obama, either.

If you think that's a win for the country then you better hope you are in the 1%.

Thank gawd he's no Hillary or Barack. We don't need more moderate Republican policy. We NEED Bernie.

I think he's got a chance, and he'll have my support all the way through.

He's not a neo-liberal Democrat.

how to spell his name. You can edit your post.

He's BETTER than them.

If you catch my drift.

You mean like that?

exactly what caucuses and primaries do you see Sanders winning?

This should be fun.

But I've predicted for years here that she'll lose the general. I stand by that. She is not well loved in the general voting population and by the time Nov 2016 rolls around, she'll be even less so. Her populatrity drops with each new poll.

The Republicans will vote for a moldy tuna sandwich if it means voting against Clinton.

She jacks up Republican turnout while killing Democratic turnout.

To win, the Republican candidate needs all 10 "purple" states, and has to flip one "blue" state. That can only happen with a Democratic nominee that turns off voters, and runs a Gore-level abysmal campaign. Clinton, Webb and Chafee are the only ones that can pull that off.

Sanders or O'Malley would have to win one big state or two small states to reach 270 electoral votes. Winning VA should be easy for either of them. Winning CO + IA should be very easy for Sanders, and would also give him 270 votes.

...whereas they'll give thoughtful consideration to voting for a Socialist?

So Sanders does not particularly stand out on that front.

But the Republicans have spent 30 years turning the Clintons into Satan incarnate. Clinton's candidacy in the general election will do more to boost Republican turnout than anything the Republicans can do.

Bottom line, the anti-Clinton folks have been in the Republican camp for the past ten years and were never part of the Democratic equation.

At least, not a remotely significant number of Republicans. Clinton not getting Republican votes isn't a change. Neither would Sanders or O'Malley not getting Republican votes.

"Purple" states are won by turnout, not cross-party voting. Because cross-party voting is insignificant compared to fluctuations in turnout. Like having $1,000,000.01 versus $1,000,000.02.

Clinton is an enormous boost to Republican turnout, because Republicans have spent 30 years specifically attacking her. In order to win states like FL, NC, or VA we need Democratic turnout to overwhelm Republican turnout. That's a lot more difficult when the Democratic candidate is driving Republican turnout.

she is able to (and has already) hire scads of staffers. I believe she has now over 80 in Iowa alone. Shw can flood the airways woth ads, conduct focus groups, etc. The candidates with the biggest war chests almost always win. And she has the money to launch the same kind of negative attacks that are linked to her but can't be directly tied to her, just as she did on 2008. That stuff will be done by the super pacs her campaign is connected to and surrogates. She has plenty of money to donate to dems who are runnin.g

But hey, it's Bernie supporters that are the 'meanies'.

the folks that bought that election for her will tell her to destroy the left.

Then why are you doing the Bernie Bounce?

Tells you a lot about their mindset.

Suddenly to be against "constructive criticism" and defending everything Bernie does, even weak gun control votes. Having spent the past 7 years calling Obama supporters cheerleaders and sycophants, now hypocritically being cheerleaders and sycophants. It is hilarious.

but if he violates an issue vital to me, I'll call him on it. Publicly.

So far, he hasn't. While I do support stronger gun control legislation, living rurally, I also understand that rural people have and use guns, and strongly oppose those controls. Vermont is the most rural state in the nation. Their elected reps in Congress SHOULD be representing them, and Sanders has.

It simply isn't the same thing, at least not for me, as, for example, Obama's war on teachers...of which I am one.

Of course I don't agree with any politician on every issue. Sanders comes damned close, though.

I love all the avid supporters who are yelling, screaming, crying, moaning, groaning, criticizing, name-calling, and on and on.

SO.MUCH.FUN.

Bernie supporters criticizing Hillary supporters for going after Bernie and the entire thread is Bernie supporters attacking Hillary and her supporters.

Any attack on Hillary (calling her putrid and vile, for example) is simply discussing policy. But pointing out a true policy position of Bernie's that one may disagree with is an unfair attack.

Kind of like how calling PBO a POS was a simple policy disagreement.

Adding to the whining doesn't help.

I'm enjoying the cognitive dissonance.

It's a thing of beauty and tells you all you need to know about their inability to identify a path to the nomination when real people start voting

Then they laugh at him. Then they fight him. Then he wins.

He's just reinforcing the Hillary Is Inevitable meme.

But he belongs to an elite group of living people who have actually managed a winning presidential campaign so his opinion does come with some degree of authority. You could fit those people in a Mini Cooper.

Thanks

Call it the hate that hate produced.

I love it when republicans attack each other. That bodes well for us. I'm sure they feel the same way about us.

VOTERS!

What is posted here, in fact, tells you nothing.

This is a highly partisan political discussion forum. The "trends" here have no bearing on the trends elsewhere.

My OP was not limited to, or even necessarily about, DUers.

Thinking that one group of supporters sniping at another group is a "thing of beauty" - well, that pretty much tells you "all you need to know" about how some people here view the election of the Democratic nominee, and the next POTUS.

"They're really nervous! They're scared! They're losin' it! They're getting really pissed-off!"

What utter bullshit - and totally pointless bullshit into the bargain.

The Democratic candidate will be decided by voters in the real world - not by virtue of which group of supporters on a message board "scored" more points by being nastier, or how many "avid fans" of any candidate "went after" another candidate.

Throw into that vitriolic mix the fact that so much of the BS that gets thrown around here is NOT about Sanders or HRC so much as it's about the supporters of the two, e.g. HRC's supporters are corporate-loving DINOs who support her only because of name recognition. Sanders supporters are naive, heads-up-their-asses dreamers who don't know how the political system works.

If you honestly think that what you see posted on DU "tells you all you need to know about the trends in Hillary's expensive internal polls", you need to get out into the real world once in a while. What gets posted here has nothing to do with any actual "trends" - and actually has less than zero to do with much of anything that is going on in real life.

DU is a political message board. It attracts a certain type of poster; it attracts a certain type of Democrat. It also, unfortunately, attracts a certain type of RWer posing as a Democrat.

If you think you can determine "trends" from DU, I would suggest that reading tea-leaves is a more sophisticated - and probably more accurate - option.

The upcoming primaries and the 2016 election is about choosing a president to lead a nation. It is not about the Sharks and the Jets fighting over whose "turf" the local playground is. It's not about whether it was Riff or Bernardo who got off the snarkiest one-liners at the local dance - or in a DU post.

But by all means, go ahead and find "a thing of beauty" inherent in people on a website "going after" a Democratic contender for the highest office in the nation. Tell yourself that it means something. Pretend that it is that kind of behaviour that somehow represents something - anything - whatever.

And just how sad is that?

or in 2008. I hope she loses. I hope she is not our nominee. I hope that there is a repeat of her 2008 primary lose.

She's running with the same hubris and her supporters act just as entitled this time.

Let me spell out a little more for you what is happening. When Bernie announced, all was good. The refrain was, he's fringe, he can't win, he doesn't have wide appeal, his support is a blip.

As he hammered his message, people saw that he isn't a nut. The criticism turned to the asinine he has a race problem and he can never raise enough money to win.

Now, as recent polling shows his gains in NH where he has focused, he has an immigration problem and a gun control problem.

It is a thing of beauty because it shows that he is making headway. No longer is he simply dismissed, by now criticized. That is great. It makes me happy.

We have a long way to go. But there will be great moments ahead. Don't you just love it? Your armchair psychobabble projecting notwithstanding.

... and end it with accusing others of "armchair psychobabble"?

All-righty then.