Anyone else tired of the constant Democratic bickering over the 2016 primary?

[Rookie Yinzer]

I would like some of the more "progressive" posters on this forum to realize that criticizing Bernie Sanders does not make one a brainless Hillary bot.

Also labeling anyone who disagrees with you on giving away everything for free as a right-wing Wall Street shill is not going to win you a nationwide election.

[Rookie Yinzer]

I would like some of the more "progressive" posters on this forum to realize that criticizing Bernie Sanders does not make one a brainless Hillary bot.

Also labeling anyone who disagrees with you on giving away everything for free as a right-wing Wall Street shill is not going to win you a nationwide election.

This is one of the major complaints I had with a lot of the Bernie supporters I knew, and a little bit with Bernie himself. I agreed with some (but certainly not all) of parts of his platform, and thought seriously about voting for him on Super Tuesday, but I decided at the end of the day that he wouldn't be an effective force for enacting well thought-out policy. I have some progressive tendencies but I also really value pragmatism. The thing that bothered me about die-hard Bernie supporters was they equated people who valued pragmatism, the rigorous critique of policy and appreciation of nuance with being ideologically opposed to them. Combine this antagonism with the incredible sense of self-righteous moral superiority that a lot of liberals have and it makes them really unpleasant to talk with sometimes (yes, I recognize that there are a lot of Clinton supporters who are also self-righteous and combative so spare me your "both sides do it!"). I would have much more faith in a Liz Warren-type Democrat as President than Bernie, but because I criticized Bernie for being really unrealistic, I got labelled by a lot of Bernie supporters I knew (including good friends) as a DINO, enemy of the working class, neoliberal shill, etc. And by the tenth time I got one of those comments it really got to me I started to get combative.

This post describes how I felt about the 2016 primaries so well. Great post! I truly considered Sanders for a brief period after the Iowa caucus was a virtual tie but at the end I knew he couldn't get his policies enacted and his propensity for expecting "all or nothing" from other politicians just made a Sanders presidency unpalatable to me. I did not want to vote for Hillary Clinton. She was not my first, second, or third choice but it was either her, who I knew could work with a fractured Congress, or Sanders who would have been a massive liability after he disillusioned his voters he promised so many ideas and policies to.

I agree about Liz Warren. She and Sherrod Brown are candidates I feel would be extraordinary nominees and can appeal to the concerns of some Bernie voters while still be palatable to mainstream Democrats and pragmatists.

[Rookie Yinzer]

I would like some of the more "progressive" posters on this forum to realize that criticizing Bernie Sanders does not make one a brainless Hillary bot.

Also labeling anyone who disagrees with you on giving away everything for free as a right-wing Wall Street shill is not going to win you a nationwide election.

This is one of the major complaints I had with a lot of the Bernie supporters I knew, and a little bit with Bernie himself. I agreed with some (but certainly not all) of parts of his platform, and thought seriously about voting for him on Super Tuesday, but I decided at the end of the day that he wouldn't be an effective force for enacting well thought-out policy. I have some progressive tendencies but I also really value pragmatism. The thing that bothered me about die-hard Bernie supporters was they equated people who valued pragmatism, the rigorous critique of policy and appreciation of nuance with being ideologically opposed to them. Combine this antagonism with the incredible sense of self-righteous moral superiority that a lot of liberals have and it makes them really unpleasant to talk with sometimes (yes, I recognize that there are a lot of Clinton supporters who are also self-righteous and combative so spare me your "both sides do it!"). I would have much more faith in a Liz Warren-type Democrat as President than Bernie, but because I criticized Bernie for being really unrealistic, I got labelled by a lot of Bernie supporters I knew (including good friends) as a DINO, enemy of the working class, neoliberal shill, etc. And by the tenth time I got one of those comments it really got to me I started to get combative.

This post describes how I felt about the 2016 primaries so well. Great post! I truly considered Sanders for a brief period after the Iowa caucus was a virtual tie but at the end I knew he couldn't get his policies enacted and his propensity for expecting "all or nothing" from other politicians just made a Sanders presidency unpalatable to me. I did not want to vote for Hillary Clinton. She was not my first, second, or third choice but it was either her, who I knew could work with a fractured Congress, or Sanders who would have been a massive liability after he disillusioned his voters he promised so many ideas and policies to.

I agree about Liz Warren. She and Sherrod Brown are candidates I feel would be extraordinary nominees and can appeal to the concerns of some Bernie voters while still be palatable to mainstream Democrats and pragmatists.

Bernie got more amendments passed in the 1995-2006 Republican controlled House than any other representative. Just because he's been attacked repeatedly for being some ideologue who isn't pragmatic to get anything actually done doesn't mean that there's any truth to that claim.

Let's say he does work well with Congress. I am all but sure he would alienate a strong segment of his voters. I don't think he was very realistic with his claims--- maybe that would have changed once he got to the General election and needed to appeal to voters outside the Democrat electorate. Either way he is just not my preferred choice. That's life. No need to demonized others.