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Ohio Barbarian's avatar

Bernie Sanders should have lost ALL credibility with his former supporters no longer than five years ago, when he cravenly capitulated to Biden. One can argue that should have happened in 2016 with his craven capitulation to Hillary Clinton.

Why anyone still pays any attention to anything this contemptible creature says is beyond me.

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GS-z-14-1's avatar

Sells out? Was there ever a supplemental military expenditure Sanders didn’t like?

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Rather Curmudgeonly's avatar

Really. This isn't Sanders changing his spots - this is someone who finally stopped looking through his rose-colored glasses.

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SocraticGadfly's avatar

As a former Green, now an independent leftist, Bernie's been a sellout long before 2025 on other issues, too. Look at his lust for the F-35. And on all things Middle East, his opposition to BDS. Or his various issues, both today and in the past, with pro-Palestinian protestors.

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Tedder130's avatar

The Washington pols get their information from the security state and the MSM and have a backlog of conceptions gathered over years—in the Washington Consensus, Putin is a vile dictator, one step above the Devil incarnate. I doubt any of them look to alternate media, alternate websites, have Telegram channels, or any way to corroborate what information they receive. Effectively the Americans then believe their own lies and sadly, make life-and-death decisions based on this false information. Bernie has good instincts, but is poor in true information.

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letterwriter's avatar

How much were you involved in the 2020 campaign? I was roped in as an organizer and what I saw was not what I'd expect from someone with the early 2016 platform. Vols were used to fund the ground game but it wasn't being played to win. It was very clearly a herding operation.

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Usamnesia's avatar

A common tactic and in that particular example sanders’ unwillingness to attack Killary and his Unremarkable reaction to her cheating in the debate format showed his true colors.

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letterwriter's avatar

I think he was a little trapped by needing to appear above her narcissism but in the end, as far as I could see, only people who had been through narcissistic abuse situations and come to grips with its effects were able to see what she was doing. He played that wrong, but it's tough to play it right against NPD especially dark triad. In my view he should or could have gone right for her character: "your gloating over the manner of Qaddafi's death wasn't just unbecoming, it's a hazard the American people can't accept" etc.

No, campaign lit is usually not paid for by individual volunteers afaik, but more than that: they had ordered a bit but didn't end up with any excess after the final day of physical canvassing. The print jobs are not exactly just in time; they take a while to execute and deliver. It is possible they were responding region by region for the last few days before voting in each case, but I doubt it. Also captains who did order lit didn't receive it until the day after voting. I think one could say, not much was left to chance.

The transition to having canvassers address other topics on the other hand was handled much more robustly.

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letterwriter's avatar

In 2020 that is, when the physical canvassing ended days before the vote, not the day of the vote as is usual: they didn't end up with excess lit after suddenly shutting down and not even allowing canvassers to stuff doors.

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Tom Slick's avatar

Bernie Sanders is exactly like 3/4 of DC. He’s for whatever the issue is that gets our money into the hands of whoever is willing to fund his favorite charity, which is Bernie Sanders.

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Daniel Dunkelman's avatar

Only antisemites like you can call Israel’s existential war against 7 fronts started by genocidal Islamist terrorist who want as the Nazis to eradicate all Jews from the face of the earth a genocide , is an obvious bias against Jews that you will never recognize and never accept is embedded in your DNA , not based on facts or obvious reality , I am sorry I wasted time listening to this podcast .

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RandallS's avatar

It was started in the 1920s by Zionist colonists who started buying out the land the tenant farmers/workers lived on, and kicking them off (enabled by the colonial project). Then followed by further land grabs, massacres and bombings. Shame on you for pathetically trying to conflate criticism of ethnic cleansing with antisemitism.

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David Westall's avatar

Exactly so. Stopped reading when he said Israel is a brutal regime committing genocide.

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Joner's avatar

Yes Bernie has sold out to the DNC & being a good-boy belt way warmonger. Selling your soul at this point in his career is even more incredulous 🤨.

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Scott Weinzirl's avatar

There is a massive difference between Bernie and most of the Washington establishment, particularly Dems. He always does what he thinks is right. Now, that doesn't necessarily make him right, but at least he's not corrupt. You can call him a “sell-out” but for what? Fortune and glory? Most Dems still can't stand him.

Yes, he trusts the security state far too much. And no, he doesn't pay enough attention to independent media. But when Bernie is wrong you don't have to wonder which corporate SuperPAC is pulling the strings. And at least he showed us in 16 and 20 that another way is possible, just not through the Democratic Party.

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Dennis's avatar

Bernie is a sellout to his principles. When the chips are down he capitulates each time to the DNC in return for a few “attaboys”.

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Scott Weinzirl's avatar

Bernie sees Trump as a nigh-existential threat. He acted accordingly. I think if a typical Republican had run in 2016 and/or 2020, Bernie might have fought differently. That doesn't make him a sell out. Again, it doesn't make him right. Just not a sell-out.

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Dennis's avatar

Depends on your definition of “sellout”. To each their own.

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Bud's avatar

I think the point that Ukraine was fervently lobbying to join NATO thus instigating Russia's invasion is consistently overlooked. Try to add some nuance here.

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ROBERT Incognito's avatar

But it was not the Ukrainian people but the Nazi government installed by Victoria Nuland after the Maiden coup

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Roger Hoffmann's avatar

Yes, Ukraine's leadership pushed to join NATO. They weren't alone, of course, as it was US Presidents, et al, who had been long before that promoting NATO's entry; and implying that it would happen; despite the many warnings since the '90s if not before, by high-ranking officials in US & Western diplomatic, military and Intel corps, along with international relations pros, that inclusion of Ukraine into NATO would constitute a red-line security threat to Russia which it could not ignore. For Ukraine's post-coup Presidents, however, even though military neutrality had been written into their Constitution, NATO entry was deemed a necessary pre-condition to EU entry that many Ukrainians had sought as an antidote to its economic woes.

These facts are interwoven with the very beginnings of the conflict, as it was Pres. Yanukovych's decision to decline the EU's austerity-conditioned economic 'assistance' and accept Russia's economic deal, which would have ensured peace between them for decades, that all but certainly triggered, a very short time later, Washington's plan for the coup and selection of the puppet replacement government. That's because a long-term peaceful cooperation between the neighbors, and continued Russian use of it's vitally-important Black Sea port and naval base, was contradictory to NATO aims at making the Black Sea a NATO lake

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GS-z-14-1's avatar

Sanders, AOC, Dennis K., etc. are retained in and are occasionally promoted by the petit bourgeois Democratic Party. This is a trap 🪤 for those escaping the orbit of the party. For our glorious ‘Democrats,’ this rouse pretends that ‘reformism’ and ‘pressuring the party’ “leftward” are actual possibilities.

The Democratic Party and the malicious ploy of ‘reformism’ are proven failures. The Democratic Party is where reform movements go to die — BLM, Occupy, etc.

The Democratic and Republican Parties must be disbanded, their material assets seized and applied to rebuild a world they largely destroyed, their member lists seized and they themselves banned from civic participation for life, their leaders seized and prosecuted for crimes against humanity, crimes of war against peace, and for genocide.

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Connie's avatar

Hmm. Am interested to know the options proposed to replace the current 2 dominant Parties.

Is it a given axiom that all political Parties are corrupt & self-serving?

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Jonathan Levy's avatar

Bernie is the worst of the scum. He decried the genocide and then took smiling photo ops with the genociders supporting their campaign. He never had any intention of winning the presidency but was surprised by the success of his hot air campaign before he was cheated and then supported the cheaters.

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Saxnôt's avatar

Bernie went from a socialist to a dumb liberal. Someone needs to turn his television off because all that western propaganda has given the poor chap brain rot.

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Roger Hoffmann's avatar

It's really hard to know exactly what drives Sanders and what explains the inconsistencies - in particular, back-sliding - over time. Has he become intellectually diminished? Or did he just after a time realize "the man's too strong", lack courage and spine, go along to get along and pick ever smaller and safer battles?

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Nine O’Clock Moscow Time's avatar

Bernie is a nonentity these days. I doubt that what he says really affects anyone’s opinions.

What has surprised me since the Inauguration is how little we have heard from the neoliberals, whose rhetoric was seemingly unending before that date. Has anyone heard from Biden recently? Kamala?

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Shelley Chadwick's avatar

I looked upon Bernie Sanders as the last somewhat decent Jew in Washington that, as an Independent, could withstand the Democrat and Republican duopoly Then l saw how the DNC trampled all over Jill Stein and the Green Party but, not because she is Jewish but because she is not a racist, genocidal, Islamaphobic warmonger.

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Stephen Rowland's avatar

I gave up on Bern in 2016 when he succumbed to the illegal actions of DNC and Hillary. The Cuban missile crisis had a quid pro quo in fact as Nikita Khrushchev demanded that President Kennedy remove the Jupiter missiles placed in Turkey. Kennedy agreed and they were removed while the military complained.

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