osewalrus (osewalrus) wrote,

Oh yes, and Please Stop Being So Patronizing About Bernie Supporters.

5 Things People Ought To Stop Saying About Bernie Sanders.

I'll add one more. I'm on mailing lists for both Bernie and Hillary. All the idiocy people keep saying that "Bernie is telling his supporters" is nonsense. Read the emails, read the speeches, watch the speeches on YouTube.

In fact, I'm going to reprint the findraising email I got yesterday here, which is headed with the subject line: "I'll be Damned If We Allow Republicans to Win!"

Harold - We had some amazing election results last night. We won the Oregon primary and came to yet another virtual tie, this time in Kentucky. That's 21 victories for us so far, plus three more virtual ties where the margin was less than one percent of the vote.

Now some people say that we have a steep hill to climb, and that is absolutely true. But together we have been climbing that steep hill from day one of our campaign. And let me be clear as I can be: we are in until the last ballot is cast.

This is the beginning of the final push to win California. But we are going to fight for every last vote, because every delegate we win is a statement of public support for the values we share.

Make a $2.70 contribution to our campaign and DFA today to help us win California and ensure we have the resources to continue our fight all the way to the Democratic Convention.

I come from the working class of this country, and I will be damned if we allow the Republican Party, who represent the rich and powerful, to win the votes of working class Americans.

It is my belief that the candidate best prepared to stop Donald Trump from winning the White House is the candidate who supports a $15 federal minimum wage, who stands on picket lines with striking workers, and who will fight to take our democracy back from the billionaire class.

In solidarity,

Bernie Sanders

Oooh, look at all the nastiniess, all the false promises, all the . . . Oh wait.

1. It is entirely anti-Trump.

2. It acknowledges a hard road ahead.

3. It makes the point that even if the Sanders campaign loses "every delegate we win is a statement for the values we share."

Please stop being patronizing and projecting your own anxieties and stereotypes.

In Osewalrus' unwritten book "Why Are So Many People So Annoying?" i remind myself that most people only use 10% of their brain for actually listening to other people and actually trying to figure out what they are saying. The remianing 90% of the brain is used to think about more important things like sex, determining level of hunger and or boredom, and generally being consistent with the belief that the entire universe revolves around me, me, me! As a result, people take the 10% they actually are bothering to listen and pay attention to and instead substitute what they think the other person should be saying and feeling, based on the three neurons in your entire brain you actually devote to empathy (please note, mine are on vacation today).

So when someone says "gosh, how can Bernie continue to lead all those young people astray and feed them hope they will win? Won't they all be so disappointed and angry they will go home?" What I actually hear is "I decided back whenever I decided to be a Hillary supporter that Sanders supporters were idealistic weak willed delusional people and I continue to believe that." Likewise, when I hear "Sanders really needs to control his supporters and say blah blah blah" I translate that to "I really have no idea what happened other than the repeated three different clips I've seen over and over again and I don't really care, since it is utterly consistent with my worldview to regard Bernie and friends as out of control forces of nature that will sweep away all right thinking people like myself."

What's worse is that there will be absolutely zero assumption of responsibility if Hillary loses.

In another Osewalrus unpublished book: "Why Do So Many People Have Flat Learning Curves?" I remind myself that just about no one likes to take responsibility for things going wrong. Even people who are willing to do this painful learning exercise tend to like having others to blame.

Which is one of the things about the myth of the BernieNader that particularly irritates me. Look, it is pretty clear to anyone who bothers to look at trend data and can have a memory that goes back more then 20 minutes that Dems assumed after '06 and '08 that young voters would naturally gravitate to them, so why worry about actually attracting them into the party structure and making them part of the decision making process? When it turned out that increasing numbers of people under 50 feel alientated from the Democraty Party, find it unresponsive to their basic needs, unwilling to give them meaningful rolls in the decision process, they get annoyed. When this is accompanied by endles, endless requests for money and unwavering support, they get more annoyed.

And the continued blame of younger voters is non-stop. Every lost bi-election is not about the failure of the Democratic Party to attract supporters despite having clear demographic advantages. No, it's all about how "teh kids these days" are just not willing to do what it takes to support the DNC and can't they see that no matter how awful, non-responsive, patronizing, insulting, unwilling to even listen to your concerns blah blah the Democratic Party is, it's just your duty to show up and vote for the same people who keep telling you how worthless you are and begging you for money?

Face it, the DNC has become the negging boyfiriend that keeps trying to keep under 40 voters in line by undermining their self-confidence, or the overbearing parent that keeps explaining how you just aren't up to making independent life decisions so I'll decide what you should be doing -- and since you're just sitting around here I've decided you should be cleaning up after me and running errands.

So if all the worst case scenarios centrists democrats insist on repeating endlessly come to pass, they will take absolutely zero responsibility for blowing it.  Oh no, it won't be our fault that even though we got the candidate we wanted and the opponent we wanted and the economy we wanted and everything else we wanted for the 2016 election, we managed to blow it. it will be the fault of damned BernieNader and those irresponsible, immature lazy good for nothing kids.

OK, rant over. 

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