GatewayRedbirds.com

We don't have a thread for him. Probably because his haters don't want to deal with his supporters, and vice versa. This is a really good read tho:

https://www.thenation.com/article/berni ... ks-review/

I like Run The Jewels. I like their music very much. I cannot go to a RTJ show though because they are thoroughly ruined by RTJ fans. I'm surrounded by guys who have gleaming bald heads by choice (probably they lost a little hair and then were like "I'm not getting old YOU'RE getting old" and just shaved it all off to still be punk rock) and are dressed in all black who scream and scream and scream every time El-P says something about Trump or the GOP. They're basically the angry bald aggressive-music militia that would be at a Rage Against The Machine Show if Rage Against The Machine still toured shows.

So while I very much like Run The Jewels, I am soured on them by the most devout of their followers. The people who scream and scream and scream. And need a 23-foot radius to thrash around when for crying out loud just go up front with the rest of the thrashers-around instead of making the show awful for those of us in the back who have to get out quickly to walk the dog when this is over. It makes me wonder if there is something inherently problematic about Run The Jewels that they attract these types, and thus something that I should question in my own subjective enjoyment of RTJ. Is RTJ substantive in a meaningful way or was there something kinda catchy in the anti-establishmentism of them that rang with me but that spurs the lowest common denominator among people who like music I like?

Bernie feels really authentic to me. The extent of my contact with his army was on reddit during the 2016 run up. They really believed in Bernie Sanders and seemingly had more reasons to believe in him than other candidates and their respective followers. Can’t be mad at them for passionately pointing out how [expletive] the other Democratic nominees were. They were right and still are.

I am acquainted with a mainstream liberal on Facebook that ran for state office as a Democrat last cycle and lost. They are married to a Republican and live in a rich, white suburb. They recently posted a mini-rant about Bernie. Some of the points were valid, but they also mentioned his "unkempt appearance" as a negative. This person is normally a very woke feminist and I was pretty surprised they talked about someone's appearance as a negative. That is usually totally out of bounds among feminists.

Their problem with Bernie is that he is not "one of them". He is not an elite. These mainstream liberals I'm talking about want someone with an Ivy League education that will tell them everything is OK, they can go back to their white suburb and everything will go back to normal and they won't have to worry about politics again for 4 years. The only thing their favorite politicians will ever ask of them is to vote every couple years. These are the people that vaulted Pete Buttigeig into the spotlight.

If Bernie and Elizabeth Warren literally had identical platforms, these voters would still prefer Warren in a landslide because she comes from that nice, clean, elite circle, and she is not asking people to do anything except vote. Her underlying message is, "I will fight for you so that you can rest easy." Bernie's underlying message is "I need you to step up and fight and struggle alongside me." These white liberals don't want to do that. They want someone to fix their problems for them. The liberals I'm talking about are used to having people work for them. That's why they want to simply hire Pete Buttigeig to fix their problems for then and be done with it. Bernie represents a class of people that generally do not get to hire many people to do work for them. They have to do it themselves.

Bernie's tone deafness on race may be his downfall, which is unfortunate. A frustration of mine is there are still so many white leftists that don't get it. One leftist I know who is normally very smart made a Facebook post a while back that said something like "White men are at the center of the working class and if we want to win, that's we need to put them at the center of our movement". This is incorrect. Something like 63% of minimum wage earners are women and a quarter are minorities. There are industries like hotel workers that are dominated by women of color. We need to put groups like this first. If we can make things better for them, it will be even easier to make things better for the rest of us. Bernie seems afraid or unwilling to articulate this.

Does Warren come from an elite background? I'm not sure that she does but I could be wrong. Their platforms are very similar, and yet Bernie is polling much stronger than she is, so I don't know that she's benefiting from the good will of elite liberals at this point.

I like Bernie a lot because he tells it like it is and is clearly authentic and I like his ideas. His curmudgeon act is part of that authenticity, and I bet he would actually do well among the white Obama voters who switched to Trump. Bernie also does well with young people of color and Twitter activist folks. It's the older POC voters he seems to struggle to connect with. i.e. people from his generation who grew up in the cold war and have a much more skeptical view of "socialism."

My hesitation with Bernie is, and this is a genuine question because I do not know the answer to it, what legislation has he ever managed to actually get through Congress and pass into law? He can be the most pure-blooded liberal any of us have ever seen, win the Presidency, and then accomplish absolutely nothing legislatively. Maybe that is an unfair scenario though because you could argue that Republicans will simply resist every single Dem legislative priority regardless of who is President. This is why you have to get rid of the filibuster, but I digress.

Elizabeth Warren has the kind of practicality to her that seems to translate into getting legislation done more often. She is also equally, if not more, articulate at explaining progressive policy to non-wonks, and she connects with women and older people better. She's a better listener. Bernie, I hate to say it, trends a little more towards the demagogue side of the liberal spectrum. For me, his greatest value is that from that position he is able to inject these ideas into the political bloodstream better than anyone has in recent memory. He is great at that.

Basically, I'm saying that your take on wealthy liberals is spot on and cuts to the heart of the problem in the Democratic coalition: the wealthy liberals who fund the party and inhabit Washington do not have the same incentive to change the system that working class voters have, and working class voters know that. I just don't think that Elizabeth Warren is particularly guilty of that problem.

I would argue that many wealthy liberals have incentive to NOT change the economic system.

Bernie very recently passed a bill withrawing us from Yemen that made it to the presidents desk and got vetoed. Pretty impressive, and very relevant to his future job description. This argument has always been pretty disingenuous though. Not a single candidate really has any impressive legislative accomplishments. Warren did the CPB stuff done before she got to the Senate, I think. Biden had the crime bill that was a disaster. Its just flat out not a prerequisite for the Oval office.

The issue i believe youre getting at is if Bernie is willing to compromise, and the clear answer from his record is a resounding yes

That article is all about his progression into becoming someone more willing to compromise as well as how the ideas he is almost single-handedly responsible for mainstreaming have done more to change our political climate for the better than anything any other elected democrat has been able to accomplish through actual, passed legislation.

Look at how easily the entire Obama legislative legacy was dismantled. True change needs to be reinforced by a political movement from the bottom up. AOC. Tlaib. These folks are the beginning of the left's rebirth and they wouldn't be there without Bernie's '16 campaign and all the hard working people who had a hand in building that movement.

Word. I'm just playing devil's advocate. I like Bernie and voted for him in the 2016 primary.

I like Elizabeth Warren a lot too, though. If tomorrow I had to pick one to vote for it would be a very tough call for me.