Why is Tulsi Gabbard bashed far more than Bernie Sanders?

[Joey1996]

Tulsi Gabbard on civil unions as a state legislator:

This bill is very disrespectful to the people of Hawaii who have already spoken loud and clear on this issue. As Democrats we should be representing the people and not a small group of homosexual extremists.

Yeah that's inexcusable

[cvparty]

I dislike Tusli Gabbard since she has taken weirdly conservative positions on numerous political issues, and that she voted with Trump more than expected for someone from a District as heavily Democratic as hers based on the 538 tracker (which in my opinion, should be a litmus test for whether or not someone needs to be primaried).

i screamed at this

[Dr. MB]

I share a lot of views with her, especially on economics. Anti-TPP, pro-Glass Steagall, etc.

With LGBT, she's obviously moved away from her positions in the early 2000s. I couldn't care less what she personally thinks, because politically at least she is pro LGBT and isn't exactly supporting a same sex marriage ban. Thinking she is socially "far right" or even right-wing is ridiculous. That might have been true two decades ago, but it isn't now.

Her foreign policy is definitely better than the foreign policies of all post-FDR administrations, so I'll leave it at that.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

As I said yesterday and will repeat today in a simplified down manner, she's dovish in the sense she's the opposite of the neocons but also comes across as a bit wreckless, as evident by her foreign policy trip to Syria and is a Hindu nationalist. I don't mind her terribly in Congress but I wouldn't trust her as POTUS.

Her foreign policy is much less reckless than the establishment foreign policy which supported arming every random jihadist in Syria.

And this whole Hindu nationalist thing has been blown out of proportion. Yes, she has met the members of the ruling party of India, BJP. She has also met INC members.

I don't disagree with you on the first bit, but I'd rather have someone who would arm as close to no one as possible (which is what Sanders/Gillibrand/Warren would be more likely to do than Gabbard).

As for the Hindu nationalist thing, https://qz.com/628124/tulsi-gabbard-the-first-hindu-in-the-us-congress-on-modi-hinduism-and-linking-islam-to-terror/ makes me think it's not exactly a nothingberger.

Warren is definitely more hawkish. She voted for the $80 billion military increase. Gabbard voted against that.

Modi does suck, but no one cared when Obama met him again 2 months ago in Delhi.

Because it's not like meeting with leaders of other countries is the president's job or anything.

Obama wasn't President 2 months ago.

[HillGoose]

they're both commies

[publicunofficial]

Remember when Hawaii had that false missle alarm and Tulsi Gabbard's response was to go on Twitter and demand retaliatory strikes on North Korea?

[HillGoose]

Remember when Hawaii had that false missle alarm and Tulsi Gabbard's response was to go on Twitter and demand retaliatory strikes on North Korea?

did she actually say that?

if she did I have a new respect for her

[YE]

Moderate DINOs hate her because she's a young, attractive, military veteran with a Non-Interventionist Foreign policy and Left-Wing economic policies who doesn't scream about #metoo and Transgenders all the time like Gillibrand.

No, instead she advocates for multiple leaders who support the mass killings of Muslims in their own countries.

Her left-wing economic policies don't mask the fact that she's far-right socially. Which of course is exactly what you want, which is why you like her so much.

Is she though? I realize her father opposes(ed) gay marriage, but she's one of the leading voices to decriminalize weed in the House.

"Sure, she called people who want gay marriage 'homosexual extremists,' but at least she supports making weed less illegal!"

My issues with her are:
-her shaky record on LGBTQ+ rights. Despite her current lip service to preserving my right to exist, I don't entirely trust her due to her previous statements
-meeting Assad
-supporting Assad
-the Hindu nationalist stuff isn't great
-I'm suspicious of any Democrat praised by Republicans (Steve Bannon, Bill Kristol, etc.)
-was very slow to endorse Hillary after Bernie lost

My problems with Bernie are:
-his ideas are good but he had no real feasible plans to actually get them through Congress
-would not have been able to actually get anything done
-Republicans would have used MUH SOCIALISM to hammer him in the General, and if he somehow won that, they would have clobbered the Dems in 2018 and 2020, probably giving President Cotton or whoever supermajorities to work with starting in 2021, who would then reverse anything Sanders managed to accomplish, and then some
-civil rights is a huge issue to me and he seems to view the rights of racial and sexual minorities as less important than the issues of "ordinary Americans," by which I can only assume he means straight white people, since I know a ton of people who aren't white and/or straight but are what I'd describe as "ordinary Americans" concerned about healthcare, taxes, and other "bread and butter" issues
-his die-hard supporters are obnoxious as , and this is coming from someone who supported him in the primaries

I wasn't aware that Tulsi Gabbard at one point was as much of a critic as her father was on the issue, so I looked it up and you're right. As I've indicated on this thread, I'm not a big fan of Tulsi 2020; I just wondered where Atlas got this idea that she's socially conservative from.

As for Bernie Sanders electability, I don't really wanna derail the thread, but since you seem to make substantive, quality posts, I'll chip in. In order for Sanders to be successful (or honestly at this point basically almost every Democratic president), there's gonna need to a realingment towards the Dems that likely results in a Democratic trifecta willing to pass a progressive agenda. No Democratic will get much, if anything productive done with a split or GOP congress. Republican's will paint almost every Democratic nominee as socialist, and most Democrats are scared to go on the offensive when that happens and make strong arguments towards left-wing ideas, so they cave in. At least Sanders seems willing to aggressively go on the offensive towards said ideas. Also, if they his programs got passed and implemented, most of Bernie's programs would be quite popular. The GOP will try to undermine his programs, much like they try to do with Obamacare now, but they won't re-appeal it for the same reason they haven't been able to gut Social Security and Medicare. As for civil rights, I think in that context, "ordinary Americans" mean the bottom 99%, but I understand how blacks could view it differently.

I'm going to further slightly-derail the thread and point out that I agree with both of you. I agree with you in that Bernie's aggression (although sometimes it manifested itself in really unproductive ways on the campaign trail) was very important for putting issues like Medicaid for all and Tuition-free college in the discussion for the left to try to seriously debate. However, I agree with JFK in that, aside from how vocal and assertive he was, Bernie would have been a horrendous agent for these progressive changes if he was in office and could have done serious damage to those causes. In a way that is similar in some way to Trump, he didn't seem to have any plan for working his legislation through congress (or through whatever government agencies he would have had at his disposal). I decided I couldn't support him when I heard Tom Ashbrook ask him in an interview how he planned to advance his agenda when he faced Republican intransigence, and Bernie's answer was that he would just persuade the country's youths (??) to march on Washington and have some mass demonstration that would intimidate Congress. That isn't just an idiotic way to enact policy, it's a little demagogic. He also demonstrated that he was impossibly ideologically rigorous. Having a voice like that in the Senate is great, where he (now) has the power to apply pressure to pull legislation leftward, but having someone in as a sole arbiter of policy enactment like the President is a recipe for disaster as soon as you have to make any difficult decision with trade-offs. That's why I would vote for a pragmatic progressive like Warren or Perriello (although I'm afraid Warren would get slaughtered in a general election versus Trump) a million times over someone like Bernie.

-Republicans would have used MUH SOCIALISM to hammer him in the General, and if he somehow won that, they would have clobbered the Dems in 2018 and 2020, probably giving President Cotton or whoever supermajorities to work with starting in 2021, who would then reverse anything Sanders managed to accomplish, and then some

Obama was very, very concious about not appearing as "radical" in any sense, yet he received an enormous amount of crap many voters actually bought. I think this factor may be overestimated a bit. And as of certainity of a candidate betting hammered in GE, we all saw what happened in 2016.

I agree with the larger point that Bernie getting sandbagged by boogeymen arguments isn't a good reason not to nominate him, but I don't think this analogy is effective. Plenty of people were able to tar Obama as some socialist, and those same people would probably do the same to a Tom Carper or Mark Warner-type Democrat. But because Obama tried so hard not to appear as a radical, I think enough persuadable voters were given a permission structure to support him, in a way that I don't think they would with someone who was openly a socialist. It's one thing to have someone else call you a scary name, it's another to embrace it and run with it yourself.

Bernie got asked a lot during his campaign about how he'd implement his ideas, and he's say that millions of people would need to rise up and put political pressure on their representatives to vote for X policy. Obviously, that wouldn't work, but I liked how he responded like that since it shows that Bernie is at least willing, unlike many Democrats, actually stand up for his policies. Now as for your broader point, you're right that Bernie didn't have any concrete strategy to implement his ideas but I could see him passing his agenda through Congress if he had solid majorities, which in a realignment scenario is likely, say ~55 senate seats and ~240 house seats. As for Trump not enacting parts of his agenda, I'd point out that it's more politically difficult to remove welfare programs than add them, which is what Bernie would be doing, although admittedly Sanders wouldn't get much more done with the majority of Trump's size either.

As for the socialism thing, people already know Bernie is a self-described democratic socialist, and he (along with Joe Biden) are the most liked of the possible 2020 candidates though so I'd assume any ancestral swing voters who are unwilling to vote for a socialist wouldn't be support him in the first. Thus, I'd be inclined to think that the effects of screaming "MUH SOCIALISM" will basically just rile up the far right wing base (and it'd also rile up the far right if say Tom Carper was the Democratic nominee).

[TheLeftwardTide]

Remember when Hawaii had that false missle alarm and Tulsi Gabbard's response was to go on Twitter and demand retaliatory strikes on North Korea?

did she actually say that?

if she did I have a new respect for her

join us
for what it's worth, I don't support Gabbard, though

[Pennsylvania Deplorable]

The establishment of both parties can't stand her ever since she went to Syria and expressed support for keeping Assad in power. Supporting the sovereignty of nations opposed to Israel is a big taboo in the beltway.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Remember when Hawaii had that false missle alarm and Tulsi Gabbard's response was to go on Twitter and demand retaliatory strikes on North Korea?

did she actually say that?

if she did I have a new respect for her

join us
for what it's worth, I don't support Gabbard, though

Are you guys serious? Publicunofficial was clearly joking, since she was one of the first to say it was a false alarm.

[Thunderbird is the word]

because a lot of Bernie supporters (myself included) aren't wild about her either. It's really just a small but vocal following that she has.

[TheLeftwardTide]

Remember when Hawaii had that false missle alarm and Tulsi Gabbard's response was to go on Twitter and demand retaliatory strikes on North Korea?

did she actually say that?

if she did I have a new respect for her

join us
for what it's worth, I don't support Gabbard, though

Are you guys serious? Publicunofficial was clearly joking, since she was one of the first to say it was a false alarm.

lolno