Maybe, maybe not. But maybe when 10-15 of those donors get together and try to reach out and set up an event, they get some quality time with the candidate?
Saying big donors are evil is not disingenuous. When anyone around here says that, I’m pretty confident they’re not talking about $200 donors, and I think you know that.
I think if they’re pooling together to set up private fundraising events, that’s bad, but I hadn’t thought about it much before now. Like it’s basically completely legal quid pro quo, right? Hey, 20 of us will give you $2,800 each, but you’ve got to come hang out privately in a room so we can get a little alone time with you to tell you what we want you to do for our $56,000, and maybe we can make sure there are 40 of us in this room for 2020, do a little bundling, who knows?
You should take some notes down for yourself, at least. It could make for an interesting book, and you could actually have a shot at a book deal if he wins the nomination.
For some people, I think Tulsi Gabbard serves as a proxy for her perceived supporters and attacking her is a way of using her as a surrogate to attack Glenn Greenwald, 4 chan enthusiasts, and alleged Democratic voters who watch Fox News.
Anyways, here’s my dirty secret. I’m willing to compromise on issues of war and peace to get M4A, climate change, and redistribution of wealth. I know what my priorities are. I’ve thought about this a lot and I know I can’t have everything I want. I can live with some drone strikes if I get those. I know other people can’t because they have other priorities. We’ll hash it out during the primaries, but afterwards, we’ll agree that not-Trump is generally better than Trump unless they get so butt-hurt that they want to take their ball and go home. You can’t count on people like that to be part of the solution, so I ignore them in my vision of coalition-building and I’m not going to walk on pins and needles around them trying to avoid offending them.
That’s all fair enough, but the people who are really for M4A, climate action and the redistribution of wealth are pretty much on the peace train as well. The one’s who aren’t, but talk like they support $15/hr or whatever they copied from Bernie are lying to you.
Can you find one foreign policy position she takes that is not neutral to or in favor of Russian interests?
While you do that I’ll note that she is: an Assange loving,
Gabbard has stated the U.S. government should drop charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, saying “his arrest and all … that just went down … poses a great threat to our freedom of the press and to our freedom of speech.”
Obama didn’t say “Islamic extremists” enough derper,
Gabbard criticized the Obama Administration for “refusing” to say that “Islamic extremists” are waging a war against the United States.[129] She has said it was Al-Qaeda who “attacked us on 9/11” and it is they who “must be defeated.” She continued: "Obama won’t bomb them in Syria. Putin did.
Oh yeah lol Putin bombed them, leveling cities and killing tens of thousands of civilians, I digress; NO COLLUSION truther
In addition to a right wing media favorite, a Kremlin media favorite, and worst of all, a Joe Rogan favorite. It has not been my hobby over the years memorializing all the times she spoke like an RT factotum, but if you insist I can dig up some more stuff.
There’s a ton of overlap, but different priorities. I think democracy reform, M4A, climate action and rebuilding the middle class but reducing income inequality through any of a number of methods are the most important things. If we don’t get good foreign policy but we get a couple of those, in particular democracy reform, I think we increase our chances of significantly improving our foreign policy over the next 50 years by a huge margin.
The only thing in your post that’s not bullshit is the bit about her demands for saying “Islamic Extremists” which I think is actually demonstrative that she is really more of an isolationist than a peace lover, and why I support someone like Bernie a lot more. But Democratic Party war mongers are worse than either of them regardless of what television shows they go on.
I think war and peace are vastly underrated in importance. Life has been incredibly harmed for maybe 50 million people in the middle east and our FP has a lot to do with it. Yemen alone is teetering on historic famine. And war makes for bad everything else - rise in nationalism, bigotry, isolationism all sorts of stuff that leads to bad domestic policy.
They go hand in hand. There is no actually good for the working person candidate who is also a war candidate. It’s virtually impossible. And that “don’t care about the rest of the world, let’s help the American worker” is the Ron Paul vibe, not the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez vibe.
It’s demonstrative of the fact that she really likes it when people kill Sunni Muslims, whether it’s Assad, Putin, el-Sisi, Modi, and Obama from time to time; that may be the only other discernible conviction apart from aligning with Russia’s foreign policy interests.
I agree, but if Liz wins and has great domestic policy including, let’s say, democracy reform and M4A, even if he foreign policy for 8 years is bad, it’s probably going to be above replacement value for an American POTUS right now and the other wins move the ball forward on fixing our foreign policy. I don’t think the American voters would support our foreign policy if it was a more important issue to them - right now they don’t care because they’re worried about their healthcare, the economy, etc, so the military industrial complex gets to play a huge role and tropes about patriotism make both parties adopt bad foreign policy.
So make the voters day-to-day lives better and fix our democracy so that their votes really matter, and our foreign policy will improve long-term.
On the other hand, we could elect a POTUS with amazing foreign policy, but if they don’t do democracy reform and M4A we’ll only be getting a 4-8 year reprieve on foreign policy.
How much of mistakes in our foreign policy are driven by corporate interests and the military-industrial complex?
I’m not sure if this is incrementalism or just trying to avoid fighting a multi-front political war, but I think there is a gamble to be made here that you can focus on other priorities first and hope that there isn’t some sort of foreign policy crisis where war is a credible option that is difficult to avoid. Reform democracy. Take power away from corporations. And if you haven’t been sucked into armed conflict, then maybe you have the political weapons to take on the military-industrial complex.
If you’re talking about Clinton or Tanden, maybe you have a point. I’m one of her most vocal critics on here and think both of your lines in the paragraph this came from are utter horse shit. She’s a fraud. She’s 38, a fraud, and acts like she deserves to be president. It really is as simple that anyone who claims to be an isolationist but has tons of views on foreign policy is lying. True isolationists do not care. Every single place she’s gotten attention has been by throwing bombs that don’t affect anyone’s votes in this country related to the candidates/people she’s throwing bombs at.
I couldn’t give two shits about what she did with DNC/DCCC whatever. I’m staunchly anti-war, and do not believe she is. I’m sorry, I don’t. I’m not going to get into any of the stuff you’re talking about related to decisions about intervention/non-intervention, what we’re on the ground for, etc. because that’s the exact kind of two edged sword of why I could never be an effective politician. Most issues related to life and death are extremely complicated, and I don’t feel equipped to make those decisions. I can still tell when someone seems off on this kind of stuff, and she is exactly that.
You ardently come in here defending her and downplay Mueller/Russia, etc. You’re a lot like SK defending Greenwald. I don’t like making that kind of comparison, but it’s what I see. I don’t get why you do it. I also have a problem with your use of the word ‘Islamist’. People who are committing what’s defined as ‘terrorism’ are not doing it on the behalf of any religion, and that word was coined by Lou Dobbs specifically to denigrate Islam as a religion in the wake of 9/11.
it’s usually just one or two that say they want to host (usually a gay couple, at least on the west coast). They contact the campaign, who then works on scheduling if it seems like it’ll work. while the campaign does that, the host then works on getting 8-10 co-hosts (friends in their social network). once it’s all scheduled, the campaign then opens up ticket sales to the general public. literally anyone who wants to buy a ticket can, and they usually sell them at various levels.
The one I went to had 5 levels of tickets, and mine cost $250. There were probably 150 people at the event, and I got as much time for a picture/chat with him as anyone else. They didn’t have assigned seats based on what you paid…it was some dude’s yard. The 10 co-hosts might have gotten a little bit of extra time, but it couldn’t have been much, because he came directly from one event then had to leave fairly soon for another one. If anything, it was when Ben Platt was singing, which took less than 10 minutes.
People stuck around after he left, too. I got to meet the hosts (the owners of the house). I think it was the COO of NBC international or something, and his husband. A Hollywood guy. Not sure if they had a nefarious agenda, but they were really nice and enthusiastic about how much they love Pete, even though we looked like schlubs in our T-shirts and jeans, lol.
I will definitely know more about this process in a few weeks, as we have a person trying to host something in San Diego and I have some insight into the communications with the campaign.
Like maybe it’s a good thing if America loses some its power/ability to wage war and project force. Perhaps Putin will do a better job preventing atrocities in the Middle East (insert meme expressing derisive doubt here), just understand that the reason Russia amplifies US antiwar causes through RT or whatever the fuck Sputnik.com is is not because they want the world to be a better place or because they care about the lives of precious Middle Eastern civilians. It’s because they’re fucking Russia. They used to control half of the world, and for a decade after the USSR dissolved they barely controlled Russia. They want bases and pipelines and minerals, but mostly they want to show their own people how great and powerful they are so they can continue denying average Russians the democratic rights that the evil West has.
I don’t think FP is strategically the right thing for a candidate to focus on. Democratic candidates should focus on health care and maybe raising the minimum wage. Those are popular and high priorities. Money out of politics is good for every issue.
But, I’d sacrifice any progress in health care if the alternative was a major war.
But, it’s not really a problem with these candidates. Bernie is a peace lover. I don’t think Liz is a war monger. They are also both the best candidates for the other stuff.
I don’t have much problem with that one, but if the hosts and cohosts all donated more and got some personal time with him, that bothers me. If they got the time for putting everything together and getting 150 people at $250 a pop, good for them. But if they ponied up $2,800 a piece, which I’m sure they did, then that’s quite a bit different.
And of course they could have used that time to discuss stuff that is totally fine morally, but the system is just so easily corrupted in these situations. We need to fix it.
Last but not least, that’s not really the type of stuff people are talking about with “big donors.”
Get out of here, man. Joe McCarthy ruined numerous people’s lives. He was a cancer. No one will have their lives ruined for anything like this, except politically. And that’s exactly who should be ruined. Run on who you are. No one knows what Tulsi is. Not even she knows what she is, and that’s incredibly disqualifying.
I’m not a pacifist and I believe some wars are necessary, so I’m not convinced that Bernie would support a just and necessary war. I think Warren is a pragmatist who isn’t instinctively pro-war and anti-war, but might defer too much to the advice of experts. I don’t trust Biden’s judgement at all. I’m not entirely sure about Buttigieg, but I am open to being persuaded yet don’t see him as likely to be hugely better than anyone else. Everyone else seems irrelevant.
I don’t think any president is really prepared for foreign policy. I’m looking for someone who is intelligent enough to process all the different variables and see the big picture, independent enough to not rely completely on the diplomatic and military establishment, but wise enough to still use their advice judiciously.
What does that have to do with what I said? This is nowhere near McCarthyism, and it’s offensive for you to say it is. The McCarthyists are the GOP and others constantly calling every Democrat a socialist, when they don’t even know what the word means. The stuff you’re talking about doesn’t move the needle for anyone, and there’s no appetite for any of the domino effect type shit in this country that was going on probably starting what in the early 60s (sorry my history is not that great on dates)?