whembly wrote:

Still, many of his most important positions today fall well outside the traditional parameters that have bounded American political discourse in recent decades. He wants to raise the marginal tax rate for top earners to more than 50 percent — which would be the highest rate in 30 years and is more than 10 points higher than Barack Obama proposed as a candidate in 2007.

“Look, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and the other Democrats in D.C., they’re for socialism. They just — they’re not as honest as Bernie is,” said Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show last week.

“Did you honestly believe we would live to see the day when a guy, an honest-to-goodness socialist, is running for president and doing — he got 10,000 people in Wisconsin to come hear him speak, he’s gaining on Hillary in the polls? This shows you how radical the Democratic Party is.”

 Blood Hawk wrote:
Does anyone else think the Hillary Clinton is going to be Mitt Romney for 2016? She probably will end up winning the primary but liberals will never love her like they did with Obama in 2008. I mean if the republicans can put up a decent candidate they could beat her IMO. All they have to do is push Trump off the stage.

 Blood Hawk wrote:
Does anyone else think the Hillary Clinton is going to be Mitt Romney for 2016? She probably will end up winning the primary but liberals will never love her like they did with Obama in 2008. I mean if the republicans can put up a decent candidate they could beat her IMO. All they have to do is push Trump off the stage.

That and watching part of her interview earlier today on CNN bored me to death. Clinton clearly hates the press, I mean it is so obvious.

 whembly wrote:
Women and minorities overwhemingly is voting for HRC.

 whembly wrote:
She got this in the bank ya'll. Figurative and literally.

 Ahtman wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Women and minorities overwhemingly is voting for HRC.

Women and minorities tend to overwhelmingly vote for Democrats already, so that doesn't mean much.

 whembly wrote:
She got this in the bank ya'll. Figurative and literally.

The same thing was said in 2008 and she still lost.

 whembly wrote:
Thanks for making my point.

 whembly wrote:
Missed the innuendo there...

 whembly wrote:
So... you saying Sanders could be the Obama of '08?

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
Despite being another "Bush," it might still help him that he isn't from Texas. A lot of people dismissed Perry in 2012 because they didn't want another Texan in the White House.

If you were looking to substantiate the inescapable impression that the political press is vastly more sympathetic toward Democrats than Republicans, look no further than the eccentric collectivist senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders and his quixotic presidential campaign. Sanders brings all the baggage and more to the table that former Texas Rep. Ron Paul and Missouri Senate Candidate Todd Akin lugged with them into the 2012 election cycle, and yet the nation’s political reporters cannot identify a single thing that the surging socialist says about his party as a whole. The press’s collective refusal to identify “the Democrats’ Bernie Sanders problem” says all that you need to know about that increasingly activist enterprise.

Political reporters find themselves newly enthralled by Bernie Sanders’ effort to create a contrast with Hillary Clinton’s low-key style of campaigning by organizing massive rallies in stadium-sized venues situated in left-of-center cities like Portland, Maine, and Madison, Wisconsin. Crowd sizes, while not even remotely indicative of future electoral performance, are captivating symbols. Few in the press have, however, remarked on the decidedly monochromatic nature of those packing stadium seats to see the Democratic presidential candidate – these being virtually all-white crowds in predominantly white cities. Fewer still have speculated about how these crowds, uniform in both ideology and skin tone, reflect on the Democratic Party’s ascendant progressive wing.

“He’s been to Portland, Maine, he’s been to Portland, Oregon, Madison, Wisconsin, in Iowa, in New Hampshire, and he’s consolidated that white progressive vote,” Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd remarked on Tuesday. “This is what Bill Bradley did. Gary Hart did it. Paul Tsongas did it.” He noted that the Clinton campaign can take this development in stride so long as Sanders’ crowds fail to become more “diverse,” but he demurely declined to speculate about what the Vermont senator’s predominantly white progressive support says about him, his campaign, or the Democratic Party’s activist base voters. This was charitably coy on Todd’s part, but it is safe to assume that the same courtesy would not have been extended to a phenomenon candidate on the right enjoying a similar surging in the polls.

That is not the only bit of deference by the political press from which Sanders has benefited. The avowed socialist politician’s economic views are objectively anachronistic, but they have not generated the same scorn as have those of the famously libertarian, hard money advocate, Ron Paul. “Paul apparently thinks that the best approach to a 21st century globalized economy is a return to banking practices of the 19th century,” The USA Today editorial board scolded in January of 2012. No word from USA Today on the century in which Marxist-Leninism’s economic prescriptions belong.

For all the contrived efforts on the part of Democrats and their allies in the press to make Todd Akin the face of the GOP in 2012, despite his narrow ascension to the party’s senatorial nomination in the Show Me State, few in the press have noted that Sanders once held similarly antediluvian views on women’s health and sexuality that could harm his party’s standing. This week, the New York Times revealed that, in the late 1960s, Sanders wrote in the revolutionary left-wing Vermont paper, the Freeman, that cervical cancer was an unfortunate side effect of ungratifying sex.

“[H]e cited studies claiming that cancer could be caused by psychological factors such as unresolved hostility toward one’s mother, a tendency to bury aggression beneath a “facade of pleasantness” and having too few orgasms,” the Times reported. “‘Sexual adjustment seemed to be very poor in those with cancer of the cervix,’ [Sanders] wrote, quoting a study in a journal called Psychosomatic Medicine.”

One only has oneself to blame after being led astray by a medical journal that calls itself “psychosomatic,” but Sanders lapse would be excusable if it were only one instance. A Mother Jones investigation revealed that Sanders also penned a thought piece for the Freeman investigating the nature of gender roles in which he indulged in a series of almost graphic rape fantasies.

“A man goes home and masturbates his typical fantasy. A woman on her knees, a woman tied up, a woman abused.

“A woman enjoys intercourse with her man — as she fantasizes being raped by 3 men simultaneously.
…
“Have you ever looked at the Stag, Man, Hero, Tough magazines on the shelf of your local bookstore? Do you know why the newspaper with the articles like ‘Girl 12 raped by 14 men’ sell so well? To what in us are they appealing?”

Had a Republican candidate for the presidency (or the U.S. Senate, for that matter) indulged in this manner of self-gratifying sexual assault fantasy – literary exercise or no – they would be made to account for it if only to tar the party with which they identified as unfriendly toward women. But Sanders, being a nominal Democrat, has his politically incorrect short story “explained” by the likes of National Public Radio.

“One way to read the essay is that Sanders was doing (in a supremely ham-handed way) what journalists do every day: draw the reader in with an attention-getting lede, then get to the meat of the article in the middle,” NPR’s Danielle Kurtzleben soothingly averred.

“Nobody honestly believes that Bernie Sanders is a sexual pervert or that he is a misogynist or that he intends to do women any harm,” National Review’s Charles C. W. Cooke wrote, admirably advising conservatives to take the high road in regards to the revelations about Sanders’ youthful essays. “Nobody suspects that he harbors a secret desire to pass intrusive legislation or to cut gang rapists a break. Really, there is only one reason that anyone would make hay of this story, and that is to damage the man politically.”

Correct. That is precisely why Democrat-aligned media figures did what they did with regards to Akin’s rape comments, compelling every politician with an “R” after their name to condemn his remarks or be implicitly associated with them. Commentators like Cooke can, and probably should, avoid the naked narrative setting in which the media indulged in 2012. That doesn’t mean the double standards the press sets for their own conduct should be summarily dismissed.

Democrats do not have a “Bernie Sanders problem” any more than the GOP had a “Todd Akin problem,” but the fact that the political media embraced one narrative but has apparently rejected the other outright exposes quite a bit about the ailing state of that industry.

...look no further than the eccentric collectivist senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders and his quixotic presidential campaign.

The press’s collective refusal to identify “the Democrats’ Bernie Sanders problem” says all that you need to know about that increasingly activist enterprise.

Had a Republican candidate for the presidency (or the U.S. Senate, for that matter) indulged in this manner of self-gratifying sexual assault fantasy – literary exercise or no – they would be made to account for it if only to tar the party with which they identified as unfriendly toward women

Correct. That is precisely why Democrat-aligned media figures did what they did with regards to Akin’s rape comments, compelling every politician with an “R” after their name to condemn his remarks or be implicitly associated with them. Commentators like Cooke can, and probably should, avoid the naked narrative setting in which the media indulged in 2012. That doesn’t mean the double standards the press sets for their own conduct should be summarily dismissed.

 dogma wrote:

...look no further than the eccentric collectivist senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders and his quixotic presidential campaign.

Points to the journalist for the use of the word "quixotic".

The press’s collective refusal to identify “the Democrats’ Bernie Sanders problem” says all that you need to know about that increasingly activist enterprise.

Those points have now been deducted.

Had a Republican candidate for the presidency (or the U.S. Senate, for that matter) indulged in this manner of self-gratifying sexual assault fantasy – literary exercise or no – they would be made to account for it if only to tar the party with which they identified as unfriendly toward women

Probably because Republicans tend to be against anything related to sex and women. That seems like something they should adjust.

Correct. That is precisely why Democrat-aligned media figures did what they did with regards to Akin’s rape comments, compelling every politician with an “R” after their name to condemn his remarks or be implicitly associated with them. Commentators like Cooke can, and probably should, avoid the naked narrative setting in which the media indulged in 2012. That doesn’t mean the double standards the press sets for their own conduct should be summarily dismissed.

So, "Hurr, we're conservative, and we feel persecuted." This is an argument that has been made many times, and it was always ineffectual.

 whembly wrote:

 dogma wrote:

The press’s collective refusal to identify “the Democrats’ Bernie Sanders problem” says all that you need to know about that increasingly activist enterprise.

Those points have now been deducted.

Only if you're a partisan hack.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 dogma wrote:

The press’s collective refusal to identify “the Democrats’ Bernie Sanders problem” says all that you need to know about that increasingly activist enterprise.

Those points have now been deducted.

Only if you're a partisan hack.

...says the other partisan hack.

MUSCATINE, Iowa — Senator Bernie Sanders said a 1972 article he wrote describing women’s fantasies of rape had been misinterpreted, and its resurfacing showed how campaigns had become “soap operas.’’

“That we worry what I wrote 40 or 50 years ago, to the degree they become significant in the campaign, that’s just sad,’’ Mr. Sanders said on Friday.

In the article, written for an alternative newspaper called The Vermont Freeman, Mr. Sanders imagined male and female sexual fantasies, apparently to illustrate how both sexes have internalized gender stereotypes, which he went on to write were self-defeating. The Vermont Freeman no longer exists.

“A woman enjoys intercourse with her man — as she fantasizes being raped by 3 men simultaneously,” Mr. Sanders wrote.

In another passage, he wrote: “Do you know why the newspaper with the articles like, “Girl, 12, raped by 14 men” sell so well? To what in us are they appealing?’’

At the time, Mr. Sanders was 30 and running for Vermont governor on the antiwar Liberty Union Party ticket. He lost the race. Nine years later he was elected mayor of Burlington, Vt., as an independent. The 43-year old essay resurfaced this week in an article in Mother Jones magazine about Mr. Sanders’s formative years in Vermont’s leftist counterculture.

It is bouncing around social media, where Mr. Sanders is a favorite with the left, and it is unclear if the article will become a serious distraction to Mr. Sanders’s recently announced campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

He has been drawing large crowds to rallies in New Hampshire and in Iowa, where he calls for progressive policies like higher taxes on the rich to pay for public works jobs.

“It was a poorly written article dealing with gender stereotypes of the period, in the sense that a lot of men have the feel to be all powerful and controlling,’’ Mr. Sanders said in an interview after a town hall event in Muscatine, Iowa.

“Women have the feeling they have to be dependent. It was very poorly written in a way I certainly would not write it now. But if you read it, what you find is that is a bad situation for both people: women shouldn’t be dependent. Men should not be oppressors. We want a society where people are equal. That was what it was about.’’

 jasper76 wrote:
@whembley: The articles Sanders was said to have written are at least 45 years old by the authors own admission. When the media went after Akin, it was in real time about comments he just made.

I'm reminded of people making a big deal about Robert Byrd becaucse in his youth, he was a member of the KKK. He repudiated that association later in life, and in my opinion and the opinion of many others, he was one of the greatest US Senators in history (and certainly one of the most impressive orators, beside the point).

I'd be very interested to hear what Sanders has to say about these articles if he's ever grilled about them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
As it turns out, Sanders has already provided a decent enouigh rebuttal on the articles:

Bernie Sanders Recants 1972 Article on Women’s Fantasies of Rape
New York TImes
http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/05/29/bernie-sanders-disowns-1972-article-on-womens-fantasies-of-rape/?_r=0

MUSCATINE, Iowa — Senator Bernie Sanders said a 1972 article he wrote describing women’s fantasies of rape had been misinterpreted, and its resurfacing showed how campaigns had become “soap operas.’’

“That we worry what I wrote 40 or 50 years ago, to the degree they become significant in the campaign, that’s just sad,’’ Mr. Sanders said on Friday.

In the article, written for an alternative newspaper called The Vermont Freeman, Mr. Sanders imagined male and female sexual fantasies, apparently to illustrate how both sexes have internalized gender stereotypes, which he went on to write were self-defeating. The Vermont Freeman no longer exists.

“A woman enjoys intercourse with her man — as she fantasizes being raped by 3 men simultaneously,” Mr. Sanders wrote.

In another passage, he wrote: “Do you know why the newspaper with the articles like, “Girl, 12, raped by 14 men” sell so well? To what in us are they appealing?’’

At the time, Mr. Sanders was 30 and running for Vermont governor on the antiwar Liberty Union Party ticket. He lost the race. Nine years later he was elected mayor of Burlington, Vt., as an independent. The 43-year old essay resurfaced this week in an article in Mother Jones magazine about Mr. Sanders’s formative years in Vermont’s leftist counterculture.

It is bouncing around social media, where Mr. Sanders is a favorite with the left, and it is unclear if the article will become a serious distraction to Mr. Sanders’s recently announced campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

He has been drawing large crowds to rallies in New Hampshire and in Iowa, where he calls for progressive policies like higher taxes on the rich to pay for public works jobs.

“It was a poorly written article dealing with gender stereotypes of the period, in the sense that a lot of men have the feel to be all powerful and controlling,’’ Mr. Sanders said in an interview after a town hall event in Muscatine, Iowa.

“Women have the feeling they have to be dependent. It was very poorly written in a way I certainly would not write it now. But if you read it, what you find is that is a bad situation for both people: women shouldn’t be dependent. Men should not be oppressors. We want a society where people are equal. That was what it was about.’’

Good enough for me, anyways.

 whembly wrote:

Only if you're a partisan hack.

 whembly wrote:

Doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
For once, the American definition is closer to the truth. Socialism and Communism have the same end-goals, but differ in how to get there.

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

Only if you're a partisan hack.

Attacking the notion that media outlets are biased towards Democrats does not make someone a partisan hack.

 whembly wrote:

Doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Repeat something often enough, around the right people, and it becomes the truth.

 whembly wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
Despite being another "Bush," it might still help him that he isn't from Texas. A lot of people dismissed Perry in 2012 because they didn't want another Texan in the White House.

Really? I figured a Bush name is more of an albatross than a candidate from Texas.

What's wrong with Texas?

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

Of the two, extreme left and extreme right, who could accomplish more (or do more damage, depending on your point of view) solely with their own executive power?

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

Of the two, extreme left and extreme right, who could accomplish more (or do more damage, depending on your point of view) solely with their own executive power?