Progressives (Liberals)

Preposterous. Bernie has suffered complete media blackouts for months by the entire MSM. He’s been omitted from reports of voter and poll graphs and asked only gotcha questions when other candidates’ bullshit is largely ignored.

NO DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE has put up with the bias Bernie has.

That’ll be awright with me.

Martirena (Cuba)

So you think the black vote can be bought off en mass? Talk about condescending with a racist overtone. Not to mention a statement without a shred of evidential facts.

Others have answered, I think (could be wrong, often am) in the end of primary, we'll have Bernie and Bloomberg. Unless the polling trend changes after last night's debate.

Being ignored is a lot better than constant negative news. He hasn't got any negative news, the other candidates keep giving him a pass in the debates. Instead they pick on whoever seems to be below him in the polls at the time. They also give Biden a pass, by and large.

You assume so much. I do have evidence. Turn on news. See a commercial where a huge sign reads Blacks For Bloomberg with that little racist holding somebody’s black baby. Anybody who knows what Bloomberg did in NYC knows exactly why those pictures/campaigns exist.

You don’t research a lot before you make these brainless accusations.

Thank you Rev. Such bull crap from the putatively enlightened.

You’re incredibly disappointing.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bostonglobe.com/2020/02/18/opinion/we-dont-need-another-racist-president/%3foutputType=amp

Excerpt
Michael Bloomberg is expected to make his presidential debate debut Wednesday night in Las Vegas. Given how much he’s already spent on his campaign — $400 million and counting — I expect to see him on the stage in a $38,000 Bolotas armchair with a $20,000 cashmere Hermès blanket draped across his legs.

We should also expect excuses, equivocations, and evasions about the racist policies he enforced, as New York’s mayor, against communities of color.

Bloomberg will probably apologize again for “stop-and-frisk,” which allowed anyone to be stopped, searched, and questioned by police if there was “reasonable suspicion.” That suspicion fell disproportionately on young Black and brown men. Bloomberg did not start “stop and frisk” — that dishonor belongs to his predecessor, Rudy Giuliani. Yet he expanded the program, terrorizing communities of color in ways that continue to have devastating repercussions.

During a talk at the Aspen Institute in 2015, Bloomberg said, “People say, ‘Oh my God, you are arresting kids for marijuana who are all minorities.’ Yes, that’s true. Why? Because we put all the cops in the minority neighborhoods. Yes, that’s true. Why’d we do it? Because that’s where all the crime is. And the way you should get the guns out of the kids’ hands is throw them against the wall and frisk them.”

Is the man who saw potential suspects in every Black and brown face all that different from the man who called Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals?

Letters: We’re getting a good look at Mike Bloomberg
That Bloomberg’s self-financed campaign is making progress says two things, neither of them good. It shows that Donald Trump didn’t just lower the bar for who should be president, he buried it so deep many have forgotten it ever existed. While it’s true that anyone would be a better president than Trump, in no way should that be interpreted as meaning that anyone should be president.

But it also speaks to the divide between those willing to accept as appropriate another man who views constitutional rights as negligible. On social media, white liberals are scolding people of color for criticizing Bloomberg’s candidacy, preferring to see a billionaire businessman as the best way to beat another billionaire businessman. (If Trump wasn’t a billionaire when he came into office, his grifting presidency has probably gotten him a lot closer.)

That’s an easy calculation to make for those who’ve never experienced fear every time you see a police officer, even when you know you’ve done nothing wrong. (The vast majority of those stopped and frisked were innocent.) And that doesn’t even cover the deep psychological impact of knowing that, for someone like Bloomberg, the skin you’re in makes you a suspect.

Now you might have heard that Bloomberg is super sorry about all that. After years of defending this policy, even after studies proved it was both racist and ineffective in lowering crime rates, Bloomberg conveniently offered up his first apology just before launching his presidential campaign. And since he said it in a Black church filled with Black people, you know he really, really meant it.

Meanwhile, Muslims, who were subjected to profiling in a vast post-9/11 surveillance program in New York, are still waiting for Bloomberg’s apology tour to make a similar stop in their mosques.

——————
No one should ever put a sexist, racist asshole like this into power.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.truthdig.com/articles/michael-bloombergs-racism-goes-well-beyond-stop-and-frisk/%3famp

Excerpt

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is using his billions to pay for his presidential campaign ads, blanketing television, radio and social media feeds across the country. As pundits, including CNN’s Brian Stelter, suggest, this national visibility blitz may have boosted Bloomberg’s standing in national polls; it rose to 15% in a Quinnipiac survey last week. With that polling boost however, comes an increase in media and voter scrutiny — of his mayoral policy record, his business decisions as head of Bloomberg L.P. and his long history of speeches and media appearances.

First, audio of Bloomberg’s 2015 comments defending the stop-and-frisk policing strategy at an Aspen Institute event was spread on social media by activist Benjamin Dixon. Now, Vice reports that Bloomberg made disparaging comments on “PBS NewsHour” about black and Latino men while he was promoting the Young Men’s Initiative, a $127 million, three-year collaboration between his own foundation, the Open Society Institute and the city of New York.

The Young Men’s Initiative was designed to improve work opportunities for underserved communities and to “attract industries that can use the people here who are unemployed.” In the PBS interview, however, Bloomberg insulted the same communities his initiative was supposed to be serving.

“There’s this enormous cohort of black and Latino males, age, let’s say, 16 to 25, that don’t have jobs, don’t have any prospects, don’t know how to find jobs, don’t know what their skill sets are, don’t know how to behave in the workplace where they have to work collaboratively and collectively,” Bloomberg said.

Later in the interview, he added, “If you look at where crime takes place, it’s in minority neighborhoods. If you look at who the victims and the perpetrators are, it’s virtually all minorities.”

Bloomberg has apologized for both the 2015 comments and his general advocacy of stop-and-frisks, but his campaign didn’t respond to Vice’s requests for comment on the 2011 PBS interview.

Just as many reporters are combing through past media appearances, some, like Mehdi Hasan of The Intercept, are looking at Bloomberg’s record on surveillance, particularly of Muslim communities in New York following the Sept. 11 attacks. Hasan writes, “Michael Bloomberg oversaw the mass warrantless, suspicionless surveillance of Muslim New Yorkers, as the New York Police Department ‘mapped’ where they prayed, ate, studied, and worked.”

Hasan points out that Bloomberg derided Donald Trump’s Muslim ban after the 2016 election, but Trump had high praise for Bloomberg’s surveillance work: “You’re going to have to watch and study the mosques, because a lot of talk is going on at the mosques,” candidate Trump told MSNBC. “And from what I heard, in the old days … we had great surveillance going on in and around mosques in New York City.”

That the surveillance Trump mentions was courtesy of Bloomberg is not a newly revealed secret. The Associated Press received a Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for its investigation into the New York City Police Department’s clandestine surveillance program. What is new is the national attention on Bloomberg. What remains to be seen is whether he’ll be able to spend his way out of scrutiny and into the Democratic nomination.

Watch the “PBS NewsHour” clip here, and read Hasan’s full article here.

Nobody should put a hypocrite in office either. That is what Sanders is in his refusal to part ways with those who have repeatedly attacked others, while all the while claiming he won't involve with them in any way.

You are simply buying lies from a system that is desperate for Bernie not to be elected.

This lie was concocted by Hillary Clinton and David Brock. They started it against Obama. It got a little mileage but he ultimately showed her for what she was and beat her. Obama Boys, she called them—hoping to trump possible charges of racism by him with sexism by her.

She and Brock and their paid internet trolls tried it again with Bernie. Same thing: BernIe Bros. This time, the media is happily played a long.

By far, the worst internet assholes are the KHIVE who were die-hard Hillaryites who wish Bernie dead, knvoke physical assaults on Susan Sarandon and are far more profane than Bernie types are. We just challenge Hillary types and call them out in their bullshit. It’s a legitimate form of communication. Much better than wishing people dead.

Look up bravenak, MrWeeks, MrDane on Twitter. Bold faced antisemitism, incitement to assault of real people. I’m glad I got bravenak banned from Twitter—at least in one of her iterations.

You have people here who are much worse than any Bernie voter has ever been. It’s just a tired old lie.

Denial of the facts, i.e. the truth, does not suit you well.

But, hey, keep pointing at Hillary and her cronies (a.k.a. The Phony Cronies). Other than her latest attempt at staying in the spotlight (upcoming something or other on Hulu...ad ran last night during a commercial break during the debate....scared the bejeezuz out of me. Thought she was deciding to run again) Hillary is old news.

You should stop denying truth.

https://medium.com/@StealYoRedBull/before-bernie-bros-there-were-obama-boys-2327bc941e06


Excerpt:


It may seem like ancient history now, but just 10 years ago Hillary Clinton ran for president against a young, first term, African American senator from Illinois, Barack Obama. Considered the early favourite to win the Democratic nomination, Hillary and her entire campaign were completely blindsided by the rise of senator Obama in 2008. First there was his surprising win in Iowa. Next came his stunning upset victory in South Carolina of all places. (Note: This was the same spot where Bill Clinton infamously compared Obama’s campaign to Jesse Jackson’s ’84 and ’88 campaigns).
Over a year before Twitter truly took off, and barely into the new era of Facebook being open to everyone (not just college students), the 2008 campaign was very different than the 2016 campaign we just went through as far as social media goes. It was during the 2008 campaign where Obama was first heavily scrutinised for his lack of “American roots,” his ties to rev. Jeremiah Wright, and for a photo circulated by the Clinton campaign showing Obama in what appeared to be ‘Muslim garb.’
However, one overlooked attack on Obama from the Clinton campaign during the 2008 primary, is one that Bernie supporters will be able to relate to heavily, and that is the charge of sexism.
I’ve been really bothered by what I perceive as sexism [among some male Obama supporters] and have spent hours defending [Clinton] … A lot of guys just can’t stand Hillary, and it’s the intensity of their irritation with her that disturbs me more than their devotion to Obama
While that quote may sound just like something a Hillary supporter may have said about Sanders supporters in 2016, that was actually something said in an email from a Clinton supporter back in 2008 about Obama supports. The quote was included in article from Salon in 2008 entitled, “Hey Obama Boys, Back off Already!” Yet it’s amazing how if you just replace ‘Obama’ with ‘Sanders’ you would think it was from just last year and not 11 years ago.
Maggie Merrill, at the time a 31-year old grad student was quoted in the article saying, “There is this Obama-mania, where these young men get glassy eyes and start spitting out vague things about how Barack Obama is going to save humanity. Really, have you seen their eyes? It’s this faraway look. It’s scary.” That is almost identical language to what was used to describe male Bernie supporters during the 2016 Democratic primary.
And then we get this gem from one Becca O’Brien:
With straight white male progressive friends, I feel something that makes me viscerally angry and afraid — the viciousness of the rebuttals to the suggestion that [Obama’s and Clinton’s] policies are roughly equal or that Clinton’s have some benefits to them, the outright dismissal of any support of her, the impossibility of having a nuanced conversation … The whole ‘Hillary Clinton is a monster’ theme is so virulent.
Yes the attacks against ‘straight white men’ who support seemingly progressive candidates is nothing new and in fact was ironically used to smear supporters of Obama back in 2008 when he ran against Hillary. The rhetoric employed against Sanders supporters during the primary and that continues to be used against progressives to this day, is nothing but a recycled talking point that was once used against Obama and his supporters. The difference of course, social media. In 2008 social media was a shell of what it is today. Now all it takes is one article that suggest Bernie’s supporters are white men and sexist and within minutes it’s considered gospel truth as it gets spread around Twitter and Facebook. When Clinton used the same tactics against Obama, it didn’t work (though not for a lack of trying). Besides, with all the racial elements the Clinton camp used against Obama, charges of sexism were just sprinkles on top. But it should never be forgotten how charges of sexism were used against Obama and his supporters for daring to support a black man over a white woman.
In 2008 a member of Hillary Clinton’s finance committee dismissed John Lewis and Chris Dodd’s endorsements of Obama as “the guys sticking together.”
Then there’s this 2008 article written by Jake Tapper (who you may recognise from his porn name, Jake Tapper) which is headlined, “Is Obama Using Sexist Language?” In the article, Tapper highlights some Obama comments during the primary which some perceived as “sexist” and then concludes, “I find it hard to envision Obama using the same language if he were facing, say, former Sen. John Edwards.”
And then of course there’s this article from the Telegraph which suggested that some women were so disgusted with Obama’s ‘sexist campaign’ that they threatened to vote for John McCain over Obama.
While right-wing Democrats continue to spout off on twitter about ‘sexist Bernie bros’ and the ‘sexist left’ it is important to remember that the same rhetoric was once used against Obama and at one point reached a level where it may have ended up putting John McCain in the White House. The same rhetoric used against progressives, the rhetoric that tries to erase non-white leftists like myself out of existence, and that dismisses anything to the left of establishment Democrats as “sexist” and “racist” is nothing more than an old line from an old playbook. Dusted off and repolished for a new generation of smears, the ‘Bernie bro’ ‘sexist left’ narrative began in 2008 with the term ‘Obama boys.’

She still has her uses

Who'd have guessed?
TPM

When you have a leader of the Stalin/Trump variety, you get this sort of thing
WP

Jeet Heer explains how the Nevada debate showed us the Warren we’ve been waiting for.

Amy Sullivan reports that the erasing of Warren is making a lot of Democratic women furious.

h/t Paul Waldman

You missed the post saying Trump is nothing like Stalin? Looks like it. Sanders is much closer. The post said that too.