Bernie Sanders Rejects Carville’s Advice for ‘Strategic Political Retreat’ for Democrats: ‘Been Playing Dead For Too Many Years’ Already

a year ago by Redditsux to c/politics

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) rejected advice from Democratic strategist James Carville that encouraged the party to retreat from Republicans.
oakey66 162 points a year ago

James Carville is a person nobody should take advice from ever again.

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very_well_lost 84 points a year ago

Carville needs to 'strategically retreat' back into whatever Louisiana snake hole he slithered out of.

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Eldritch 19 points a year ago path: 0 15428008 15428150 15428280, hotness: undefined, score: 19, children: 4
Turret3857 8 points a year ago
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nondescripthandle 4 points a year ago

Speaking of, If you don't watch American Dad I'd highly recommend. Been my favorite show from MacFarlane for a while now.

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PlasticExistence 3 points a year ago

Cajun style

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RowRowRowYourBot -4 points a year ago
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very_well_lost 19 points a year ago

You're, right he did. In 1992.

As far as I can tell, his political strategy has not evolved even a little over the past 3 decades, as he continues to push unpopular 'compromise candidates' and continues to tell people to 'sit down and shut up' whenever they suggest maybe the Democrats should chase some reforms that benefit the working class rather than simply appeasing the Wall Street paymasters.

I don't know if stubbornly sticking to the same failing strategy for 30 years makes you 'stupid', but it certainly doesn't make you smart.

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aesthelete 17 points a year ago

To add to that, even though he helped get Clinton elected, Clinton's main accomplishment was making the Democrats more useless to the people as a result. Third way Democrats have been an abysmal failure from a progress perspective. Some of Clinton's "main accomplishments" were helping demolish the welfare state, and increasing the incarceration rate.

Obama, in retrospect, can be viewed as a third-way Democrat as well, and the primary policy accomplishment his presidency produced is a Republican think-tanked, half-measure healthcare policy that was largely a gift to the insurance companies even at the onset and has since been left out in the field to be continually picked at by vultures.

I was wondering this morning why Democrats don't seem to really have effective policy think-tanks like the Republicans do and then I thought maybe they just use the same ones.

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EldritchFeminity 15 points a year ago

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grue 4 points a year ago

Think about where Clinton getting elected for the first time falls on that chart, vs. where we are now.

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RowRowRowYourBot -4 points a year ago
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ploot 40 points a year ago

The Democrats seem to have come up with two strategies so far: either (1) wait and hope someone does something, or (2) play dead and hope someone does something.

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AshMan85 9 points a year ago

You forgot collect donations

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aesthelete 19 points a year ago

Dude hasn't been correct about how to win elections since 30 years ago, and hasn't been correct about policy ever.

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DragonTypeWyvern 5 points a year ago

And then he won because he was running Bill "I don't literally hate black and gay people" Clinton against a proven liar who tanked the economy, in an America that cared about those things.

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Alwaysnownevernotme 3 points a year ago

Also Ross Perot with a steel chair

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SnotFlickerman 14 points a year ago

I don't usually take advice from fucking fossils. Sanders is the exception.

Seriously, Carville is fucking 80, hasn't he been myopically dictating the direction of this useless fucking party long enough?

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pineapplelover 136 points a year ago

You know, Kristen, when Abraham Lincoln was in Gettysburg, looking out on the field with so many had died to defend freedom, he talked about a vision of America where we have a government of the people, by the people and for the people. What we have right now in Washington, let me be very clear, is a government of the billionaire class, by the billionaire class and for the billionaire class.

What a banger of a quote

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thatKamGuy 21 points a year ago

“Let me be very clear” is such a Bernie-ism.. even unattributed, it’s so easy to tell that it’s him.

Truly a global loss that he was never given a fair chance to challenge for the Presidency.

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sjmarf 3 points a year ago path: 0 15430161 15437318 15442978, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0
ceenote 123 points a year ago

One of the main architects of the status quo democrats thinks democrats need to respond to getting stomped by maintaining the status quo? Color me shocked.

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FauxLiving 42 points a year ago

The Democrat Party and the Republican Party have never been at odds in their position that their political donors should run the government.

The parties have largely just been the vehicles for turning corruption into legislation. Now that open corruption is legal, there's no need to upset the cart, the Democrats are just waiting their turn.

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SarcasticMan 100 points a year ago

"What we have right now in Washington, let me be very clear, is a government of the billionaire class, by the billionaire class, and for the billionaire class."

Get some Bernie

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FooBarrington 80 points a year ago

Bro, let's try throwing away one more principle, bro. Just one more. Bro, one, please, one more, bro. Just one. Then we'll get votes again. Bro. Just one, bro. One principle. Bro.

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Delta_V 47 points a year ago

"Let the bus continue to accelerate off the cliff, then the Republican voters will be mad at the driver!" says the corporat Dems sitting on the bus.

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WarlordSdocy 22 points a year ago

I would add, says the corporate Dems, sitting on the bus with a parachute made of money.

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meowmeowbeanz 40 points a year ago

Sanders channels Lincoln while Carville channels a possum—guess which inspires voters?

🐱🐱🐱🐱

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aesthelete 13 points a year ago

I'm a little out of the loop, what are all the cat faces in the comments about?

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meowmeowbeanz 12 points a year ago

The cat emojis represent a playful ranking system inspired by "MeowMeowBeanz" from Community.

Short clip of the episode: https://youtu.be/CI4kiPaKfAE

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aesthelete 4 points a year ago

Lol love it, though I'd like to see the conclusion of the old guy's rant so I'm only going to give it 4/5 meowmeowbeanz.

🐱 🐱 🐱 🐱

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CarnivorousCouch 2 points a year ago

This is such a silly callback, I love it.

😺 😺 😺 😺 😺

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Jumpingspiderman 33 points a year ago

As usual, Bernie is spot on.

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DragonTypeWyvern 14 points a year ago

And, as usual, Carville is a grifting neoliberal coasting on winning one election against an unpopular president 32 years ago.

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lefaucet 2 points a year ago

Everytime I see him on TV he's spouting nonsense about shit no one in the real world cares about. Wish they'd quit putting that irrelevant SOB in front of a camera

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kreskin 33 points a year ago

Carville is a DNC talking head moron and always has been. If we're taking advice from that idiot we're in even worse shape than we thought.

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Melatonin 4 points a year ago

What's Carnival smokin?

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kreskin 3 points a year ago

He probably smokes whatever the DNC tells him to.

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taanegl 27 points a year ago
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octopus_ink 5 points a year ago path: 0 15430927 15436819, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 0
frankpsy 25 points a year ago

The trees the New York Times is printed on wishes they were toilet paper instead.

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ininewcrow 19 points a year ago

Democrats: .... maybe if we do more neck exercises we can learn to stretch our necks more so that we can send our heads further into the hole in the ground we've been using

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adm 13 points a year ago
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PrettyFlyForAFatGuy 23 points a year ago

AOC is the closest

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OhStopYellingAtMe 15 points a year ago

Alas, AOC has two thing working against her that the centrists & the right will never get past: she has boobs.

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PrettyFlyForAFatGuy 9 points a year ago

She speaks to the working class. that's all she needs

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OhStopYellingAtMe 1 point a year ago

I wish that were enough.

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RidgeDweller 4 points a year ago

The right just elected someone with boobs, homie

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OhStopYellingAtMe 1 point a year ago

Moobs

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OsrsNeedsF2P -1 points a year ago

Haha sexist joke so funny

Even if AOC being a woman was a problem (it's not), it's not something you can change. So how about we stop making sorry excuses and start posting news and memes about her as much as we did for Trump instead?

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OhStopYellingAtMe 5 points a year ago

It’s not a joke. Too many American voters are completely put off by the idea of a woman for president. It’s stupid, it sucks, but it’s true. The patriarchy isn’t an imaginary construct.

Her being a woman is not a problem for me, or for you, or maybe not for anyone with any sort of common sense, but if centrists & right-wingers had common sense, they wouldn’t be centrist or right-wingers.

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AshMan85 6 points a year ago

There are, but the media does not want to spread their message

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frezik 2 points a year ago

The generation gap in leftist political figures is quite apparent, yes.

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OldWoodFrame 13 points a year ago

After the 2016 election, until the 2024 election, the Democrats won every election of every National political body except the House in 2022. It was a solid run electorally.

You can complain about what those political bodies accomplished, but not that they didn't win.

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ZombiFrancis 3 points a year ago

Yeah they did well in 2018 and 2020 when Trump was last in office. Not so well outside of the condition of Trump being demonstrably worse.

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breakfastmtn 7 points a year ago

Strategic retreat... Cajun style.

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Genius -1 points a year ago

I saw a lot of people saying it was worth not voting for Kamala, because it would "teach the democrats a lesson". They said "If we refuse to vote for them, they'll have to step up their game!"

Are you people happy? Do you think the Democrats are losing more right now than America's trans people, or the Ukrainians, or the Gazans are? Do you think playing Chicken with fascism was worth it?

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tree_frog 9 points a year ago
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Juice -29 points a year ago

This guy was screaming and yelling about how Trump was a fascist, and if you didn't vote democrat then that was equivalent to doing nothing in the face of fascism, or worse.

Not saying there aren't elements of fash in trumps admin, there obviously are; or that abstaining to vote was the correct strategy, I don't believe it was, though uncommitteds and 3rd party voters shouldn't be shamed for following their conscience

Just want to point out where these arguments actually originate, and where exactly they have lead. Maybe there is more to politics than handwringing and rending of garments about impending fascism -- maybe politics is something you do and not something you think or, god forbid, repeat uncritically.

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prole 28 points a year ago

This guy was screaming and yelling about how Trump was a fascist, and if you didn't vote democrat then that was equivalent to doing nothing in the face of fascism, or worse.

Yeah, and he was correct. As we are literally witnessing in real time.

Whatever stupid bullshit the man said before or since isn't relevant to the validity of that statement. I don't care if Ted fucking Bundy said it, it would still be true.

That's not how logic works. You don't get to just completely ignore a premise because you don't like a person who might have said it once.

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Juice -8 points a year ago

That's not the logic behind my statements, however logic has a beginning, middle and an end. It leads somewhere. Just letting you all know where a version of this logic leads, and it is the logic of the mainstream dems. I'm not able to articulate the whole case, but I can point to a case study.

You don't have a monopoly on logic. In fact I guarantee you that I have studied more formal logic than most. The dems abandoned us years ago. I can't say your logic is incorrect as you also haven't described yours. You may be horrified to learn that we mostly agree, most likely.

But this goon represents exactly what is wrong with the dems: career political operators whose personal wealth is directly connected to their ability to run elections, and who have no incentive to win. In fact I could almost guarantee that your logic, or the logic of most regular working people, would be more sound than his. The incentives for dems are broken, the party is broken, time to move on and form a workers party. It's time for a new logic that abandons these sickos who aren't even that different from the republicans they pretend to oppose.

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baronvonj 5 points a year ago

This guy was screaming and yelling about how Trump was a fascist, and if you didn't vote democrat then that was equivalent to doing nothing in the face of fascism, or worse.

The headline names two guys. Which are you talking about.

Not saying there aren't elements of fash in trumps admin, there obviously are

"elememts of" is massively underselling it.

or that abstaining to vote was the correct strategy, I don't believe it was, though uncommitteds and 3rd party voters shouldn't be shamed for following their conscience

The exasperation comes from the fact that from a historical and mathematical perspective, voting for the Democratic nominee in the general is the only way to not have a Republican win the race. And in spite of that reality slapping us in the face over and over again the 3rd party voters and non-voters won't budge. They could stop the rightward slide of the Democratic party by just showing up en masse in the primaries.

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Juice 1 point a year ago

I was talking about James Carville

just showing up

If you convince people the only thing they can do to oppose fascism is vote every 4 years, a position that is historically and objectively false -- fascists don't care about democracy -- then dont act shocked when their mobilization is underwhelming.

Democratic party leaders were instructing volunteers to remove anyone from their lists who mentioned the Palestinian Genocide. They were intentionally not mobilizing the exact people you want to just mobilize.

Also, have you ever tried to mobilize a group to do political action? It ain't easy, even when you aren't tying your own hands behind your back

I'm not trying to undersell the threat of fascism, what is coming is scary and many people are already being harmed by these disgusting policies. But the most important thing I hope to stress is that it doesn't matter what you call it, it matters what you do to fight it.

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baronvonj 1 point a year ago

I was talking about James Carville

That was my assumption but the ambiguous wording combined with the headline implying the article being about Sanders left me unsure. Thanks for clarifying.

If you convince people the only thing they can do to oppose fascism is vote every 4 years, a position that is historically and objectively false – fascists don’t care about democracy – then dont act shocked when their mobilization is underwhelming.

I didn't say that voting every 4 years was the only thing they could do though. I said "they could stop the rightward slide of the Democratic party by just showing up en masse in the primaries."

Democratic party leaders were instructing volunteers to remove anyone from their lists who mentioned the Palestinian Genocide. They were intentionally not mobilizing the exact people you want to just mobilize. Also, have you ever tried to mobilize a group to do political action? It ain’t easy, even when you aren’t tying your own hands behind your back

See this is what I'm saying. The voters in question are waiting for the Democratic party to put a better candidate forward before they will vote for a Democratic nominee. But when there are enough of these voting-eligible people to split the vote and give the Republicans the win, then surely there's enough of them to put a better candidate on the ballot without the party doing it for them.

I've posted in previous threads with sources .. over 99% of the legislative offices around the country (state legislatures and US Congress) are held by either a Democratic or Republican nominee. And we are one presidential election away from it being 60 years since a 3rd party candidate received a single electoral vote. Ross Perot received just shy of 19% of the national popular vote in 1992 and received zero electoral votes. I'm not saying the Democratic party deserves every non-Republican vote, but the winner of over 99% of every race at the state and federal level will be won by either the Democratic nominee or the Republican nominee. Punishing the Democratic party in the general hasn't done anything to move the party left, and we saw Bernie's campaign in 2016 see the DNC adopt many of his campaign planks, and that led to more progressives running in and winning primaries. We see how well the threat of well financed primary campaign makes incumbents support an agenda. So clearly the primaries are where we should be applying pressure on the Democratic party.

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Juice 1 point a year ago

Thanks for your input. I believe the Uncommitted movement was originally a movement to pressure Dems in the primaries, and I think that the result of that movement was that they couldn't be moved left, at least not on the issue of Israel who is carrying out a genocide. So there were a lot of people who made the same political calculation as you did. This time, it didn't seem to work. I am opposed to the idea that the mainstream of the dems even can be moved left, but I know a lot of people who hold out hope, and are showing up to try and make that happen.

There's probably a lot that can be accomplished locally, to a certain extent. And while I remain skeptical I'm not going to like brow beat or sabotage someone who disagrees with me (unlike the democrats.) But to me, the dems represent the same class interests as the republicans, just maybe a different faction of that class. But I agree that we live in a real world with real existing social forces, and if we want to change things then we have to deal with the world as it is, not as we want it to be. The actual left doesn't have the resources to deny reality like the republicans, and many democrats; we have to deal in hard and fast truths.

So I guess my strategy is to organize who I can on the far left, while others (like you maybe) organize on the center- left, and when things get bad enough that the mainstream of the democrats can no longer abide any positions to the left of Chuck Schumer, then you and I can come together to create that third party I hope for.

We call this the "dirty break" strategy, where we prepare for a split from the dems but in the mean time work within the existing framework to fight against the worst abuses of maga and the billionaire class, while trying to achieve progressive gains for workers

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some_guy -5 points a year ago

This comment was downvoted more than upvoted, but it hits the nail on the head. In fact, the final argument about politics needing to be done is exactly counter to the thing Bernie objects to: playing dead or doing nothing. How do people fail to get this point?

Wake up, dems. Your party has abandoned you. All signs from inside point at centrality and forcing out the Left.

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Juice 0 points a year ago

You'd think I was trolling for how many down votes I got. It just goes to show that in the times we live, nothing is more controversial than the truth.

Also people get so upset when you tell them that politics is practical and not ideological. The bourgeois liberal mind can't comprehend

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shoulderoforion -52 points a year ago

Wake me up when Bernie Sanders has a better plan than talking the Republicans to death

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ieatpwns 12 points a year ago

Better than sleeping

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kreskin 12 points a year ago

k, and you wake me when the centrists stop taking bribes from big donors and ignoring their job entirely.

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JustZ 3 points a year ago

There isn't anyone in the dem caucus with plans more fleshed out than Bernie. Your post might as well say "I'm ignorant and don't know what I'm talking about," because that's what it says.

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