Actions of Bernie Sanders supporters thread

[GeneralMacArthur]

Yes, but as I see you're new to the forum, I'll warn you that this board is full of people who listen to this stuff 24/7 and will try to bully you out of the room for calling it what it is.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Pete Buttigieg was trying to have a nice event where some black community leaders in South Bend would talk about why they like him and support him.  

Team Sanders decided to crash the event.  They showed up outside with their "Bernie 2020" signs and bravely protested the black women trying to say nice things about DNC corporate establishment empty-suit tool Pete Buttigieg.

That wasn't enough though so they also took the whitest guy imaginable, had him put on a Black Lives Matter t-shirt, and act as obnoxious as possible to try to disrupt the event.  Pretty much as soon as the black women started speaking, he started shouting idiotic nonsense and shut her down.  After snatching the microphone, having it wrestled away from him, and then wriggling away from everyone and running around the room like a child, he led a chant that his fellow Bernie supporters joined in on:  THIS IS A FARCE!  THIS IS A FARCE!  THIS IS A FARCE!

Watch all the cringey progressive activism in the video below!

Anyone think Bernie will apologize or denounce this behavior?  LOL of course not.  He has no class.

https://twitter.com/Anthropology4P/status/1202367327347658753

[GeneralMacArthur]

Why won't more black people vote for Bernieeeeeeeeeee??

[GeneralMacArthur]

Just three more months of this nonsense. Maybe just two if his inevitable loss in IA erodes his gains in NH.

Just to quote myself from the other thread...

As if Sanders is ever going to drop out.

His secondary goal in this race, short of winning, is to:

Amass a large bloc of delegates
Whip them up into an anti-DNC frenzy with allegations that progressives are being cheated, that the party is writing right-wing positions into the platform, etc.
Threaten to have them cause a big mess on live television
Blackmail the party into giving into his demands about platform positions and kissing his ass

He'll stick around until the end so that in the late contests, once the nominee has already been decided, people can use him as a protest vote and give him a small but nominal amount of delegates.  Even if he loses the June 6 Virgin Islands Caucus 80-20 that's still one more floor delegate.

I'd say I hope the DNC won't give him what he demands like they did in 2016, since as we saw then he's not actually gonna do a damn thing to stop his supporters from embarrassing the party... but this is Tom Perez we're talking about.

I guarantee you that if Bernie wins any delegates in Indiana, that guy in the BLM t-shirt would be at the convention.  This is who his team picks.  This is the kind of behavior they want.

These are the people who four years ago organized a "fart-in" to protest Clinton's nomination, stormed and occupied a CNN tent, posted conspiracy theories about Wi-Fi routers being "white noise machines" to drown out their obnoxious chants while civil rights heroes and veterans were speaking, and then protested by putting tape-gags reading "SILENCED" over their mouths and posting selfies on Twitter.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Can we please not do this "bernie bro is a racist sexist term" argument? It was incredibly idiotic the first time it was trotted out and it gets dumber each time it gets repeated.

You'll have to forgive sawx.  He's still suffering PTSD from when I paraphrased him in a quote four months ago.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Can we please not do this "bernie bro is a racist sexist term" argument? It was incredibly idiotic the first time it was trotted out and it gets dumber each time it gets repeated.

You'll have to forgive sawx.  He's still suffering PTSD from when I paraphrased him in a quote four months ago.

You know damn well what you were trying to do was slanderous.

Don't blame me because you have all the thorns of Landslide Lyndon and none of the intelligence.

You know, I still have that quote saved in my profile.  And I'm getting pretty sick of you lying about it to make me look bad.

Dear Atlas:  Here is the "slanderous" quote, which at the time I jokingly attributed to sawx as a paraphrase of his argument.  This is the quote that sawx has, in dozens of posts over the last four months, been using to gaslight y'all into believing I'm such a horrible guy:

well, well, well, uh, well TECHNICALLY it wasn't just MEN who told her to get cancer, um, it was also women!  So you're a SEXIST!  gotcha, bernie 2020

the context is, some Bernie Bros sent letters to the Working Families Party chairwoman, after she endorsed Warren, telling her to get cancer and die.  sawx said the real problem was people using the term "Bernie Bros."

[GeneralMacArthur]

Can we please not do this "bernie bro is a racist sexist term" argument? It was incredibly idiotic the first time it was trotted out and it gets dumber each time it gets repeated.

You'll have to forgive sawx.  He's still suffering PTSD from when I paraphrased him in a quote four months ago.

You know damn well what you were trying to do was slanderous.

Don't blame me because you have all the thorns of Landslide Lyndon and none of the intelligence.

You know, I still have that quote saved in my profile.  And I'm getting pretty sick of you lying about it to make me look bad.

Dear Atlas:  Here is the "slanderous" quote, which at the time I jokingly attributed to sawx as a paraphrase of his argument.  This is the quote that sawx has, in dozens of posts over the last four months, been using to gaslight y'all into believing I'm such a horrible guy:

well, well, well, uh, well TECHNICALLY it wasn't just MEN who told her to get cancer, um, it was also women!  So you're a SEXIST!  gotcha, bernie 2020

the context is, some Bernie Bros sent letters to the Working Families Party chairwoman, after she endorsed Warren, telling her to get cancer and die.  sawx, in an argument almost as tired as eric82oslo's Yang spam, said the real problem was people using the term "Bernie Bros."

Your post got modded because you tried to portray me as someone who would defend the vile things that were said. You then decided to play the victim after you publicly slandered me on the thread and you got the thread locked after you defamed my character.

Man up and own your ****-up.

I mean, people can read the quote for themselves and see that what you're saying is a lie.  I never accused you of defending the threats, only of distracting from the substance of the thread with commentary about us all being sexists for calling the threateners "Bernie Bros".

[GeneralMacArthur]

Why won't more black people vote for Bernieeeeeeeeeee??

>Buttigieg at 0% with Black South Carolinians

IIRC, McArthur is a Biden supporter.

I support Biden but I also like Buttigieg a lot!

Pretty much the only serious candidates I really dislike are Sanders and Gabbard.  I think Warren's policies are dumb but I'd be happy with her as president.

So funny story, for everyone who cares to follow: you were the one who brought the Warren/WFP spat up. The debate was about Briahna Joy Gray doxing a journalist - something that I actually said I found distasteful. I called Lyndon out and you jumped in, assumed my position on the issue (where there was literally nothing to go off of), and made a completely vile fake quote of me that (as the record shows) was far beyond the pale.

sawx, your position is to distract from every discussion about the deplorable behavior of Sanders supporters by taking the term "Bernie Bros" super-literally and feigning outrage over it.  Similar to how you just wrote an entire novel -- which I'm not going to bother quoting -- based on taking other parts of my post super-literally.  I don't know how you function when you get triggered by modest exaggeration.

Whether the original debate was about Brie Joy doxxing journalists or Bernie supporters harassing the WFP, it's really immaterial.  The point is nobody appreciates you interrupting every single Atlas discussion on this subject with tangential phony-outrage hysteria.

I don't really care or pretend to know whether or not you support telling WFP members to get cancer and die like your fellow Bernie Bros.  The point is that the appropriate response is not to write a 500-page belligerent diatribe about how all of Atlas is sexist for calling these dummies "Bernie Bros"

[GeneralMacArthur]

Keep fighting the good fight against communism, GeneralMacArthur. I hope you won't surrender like your namesake did, and if god forbid Bernie or Warren wins the nomination, I hope you consider putting country over party.

What?  MacArthur got sacked by Truman because he wanted to use nuclear weapons against China when they intervened on the North Korean side of the Korean War.  He also wanted to send heavy arms to Taiwan so they could launch a simultaneous invasion of the mainland.  How is that "surrendering"?  The man got fired for being too ardently anti-communist.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Bidenbros like GM are part of why I will never vote for Biden in the general.

I mean you are just feeding into the typical BernieBro stereotype by helping to hand Trump a victory in 2020. And BTW, Biden Bros doesn't work because Biden does BETTER with women than men. Just because he happens to have male supporters on a male-dominated forum does not make it any more of a thing.

Biden Bros doesn't work because Biden supporters didn't send hundreds of e-mails to Michael Dukakis telling him to kill himself when he endorsed Warren over Biden.

And if they did, you would be totally shocked, because that kind of behavior is only characteristic of ONE campaign.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Well look at that, the Sanders campaign did in fact denounce the protesters.
Color me shocked, good for them.

https://mobile.twitter.com/shaqbrewster/status/1202668521207058434

[GeneralMacArthur]

NYC DSA doxxed a Pete supporter who was trying to hold a private fundraiser



Buncha Bernie Bros showed up to chant their usual slogans.  Remember this is just some guy's house, not a public location.  Like they all drove into the neighborhood, got out of their cars and stood on the front lawn to chant slogans in front of this person's house, because he had the audacity to hold a fundraiser for Pete Buttigieg.

https://mobile.twitter.com/DJJudd/status/1204959572160589825

But that's not all!  One of the Bros broke into the house and filmed himself harrassing people while they politely asked him to leave.  Eventually the police arrived and escorted him out of this poor guy's house.

https://imgur.com/1wMSZxx

Only one candidate does this.  You never see Biden supporters doing this.  You never see Warren supporters doing this.  You never see Buttigieg supporters doing this.

Will Bernie condemn?  Will sawx condemn?

[GeneralMacArthur]

Will Bernie condemn?  Will sawx condemn?

If it were actually a generally accepted rule that one had to disavow all stupid behavior by those who agree with their political beliefs in order to be taken seriously, Joe Biden would've had to "condemn" you a thousand times over by this point.

The last thread I posted about this kind of behavior, the Sanders campaign did end up denouncing their own supporters.

Because Macarthur is generally possessed of a psychotic hatred of Sanders and would likely vpte for Trump if he were nominated?

I think I've said several times on this forum that I would vote for Sanders, or any Democratic nominee, over Donald Trump, and wouldn't think twice about it.  But I'll say it again.  There is zero doubt in my mind that I would vote for Bernie Sanders over Donald Trump.

I would even enthusiastically campaign for Bernie Sanders and go door-to-door lying to people that his policies are good and he'll be a great president.

Hopefully he doesn't win the nomination so I don't have to do that.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Will Bernie condemn?  Will sawx condemn?

If it were actually a generally accepted rule that one had to disavow all stupid behavior by those who agree with their political beliefs in order to be taken seriously, Joe Biden would've had to "condemn" you a thousand times over by this point.

The last thread I posted about this kind of behavior, the Sanders campaign did end up denouncing their own supporters.

Because Macarthur is generally possessed of a psychotic hatred of Sanders and would likely vpte for Trump if he were nominated?

I think I've said several times on this forum that I would vote for Sanders, or any Democratic nominee, over Donald Trump, and wouldn't think twice about it.  But I'll say it again.  There is zero doubt in my mind that I would vote for Bernie Sanders over Donald Trump.

I would even enthusiastically campaign for Bernie Sanders and go door-to-door lying to people that his policies are good and he'll be a great president.

Hopefully he doesn't win the nomination so I don't have to do that.

Why don't I believe you?

Because you have a demonized image of me in your brain that bears almost no resemblance to the actual me.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Will Bernie condemn?  Will sawx condemn?

If it were actually a generally accepted rule that one had to disavow all stupid behavior by those who agree with their political beliefs in order to be taken seriously, Joe Biden would've had to "condemn" you a thousand times over by this point.

The last thread I posted about this kind of behavior, the Sanders campaign did end up denouncing their own supporters.

Because Macarthur is generally possessed of a psychotic hatred of Sanders and would likely vpte for Trump if he were nominated?

I think I've said several times on this forum that I would vote for Sanders, or any Democratic nominee, over Donald Trump, and wouldn't think twice about it.  But I'll say it again.  There is zero doubt in my mind that I would vote for Bernie Sanders over Donald Trump.

I would even enthusiastically campaign for Bernie Sanders and go door-to-door lying to people that his policies are good and he'll be a great president.

Hopefully he doesn't win the nomination so I don't have to do that.

Why don't I believe you?

Because you have a demonized image of me in your brain that bears almost no resemblance to the actual me.

I'd say that given your obsession with hating Sanders like he killed your dog or something, it's far from inaccuarate.

Sanders is the leader of a movement battling the Democratic Party from the inside with extremist policies and tactics and a neverending avalanche of bad-faith demands and arguments.  It's a whole group of people trying to tear the party apart and create a left-wing tea party.  And there's a big social media and alternative media pipeline trying to push young people into this movement.  They lie and lie and lie to foster a hatred for Democrats in the minds of progressive-minded young people.

Yeah, I'm not a big fan.  I think he's a big threat to the party and needs to be taken down.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Sanders is the leader of a movement battling the Democratic Party from the inside with extremist policies and tactics and a neverending avalanche of bad-faith demands and arguments.  It's a whole group of people trying to tear the party apart and create a left-wing tea party.  And there's a big social media and alternative media pipeline trying to push young people into this movement.  They lie and lie and lie to foster a hatred for Democrats in the minds of progressive-minded young people.

Yeah, I'm not a big fan.  I think he's a big threat to the party and needs to be taken down.

It says a lot that I agree with everything you said but I still think you're the most obnoxious poster on this site.

You can either lie down and let them walk over you, or you can put yourself out there and take all the abuse and bullying that this board is known for.  In 2016, Clinton supporters all over the internet were bullied into silence, or fled to enormous private Facebook groups, leaving Sanders supporters to dominate the conversation through the general election with nobody pushing back and nobody calling them out.

I mean look at this thread.  All I did was post what happened with barely any editorializing.  And immediately got a dozen posts telling me what an awful poster I am and how dare I even post about this event.  As if supporters of a presidential candidate breaking into a private home to interrupt another candidate's fundraiser isn't even newsworthy.  Imagine if Trump supporters did this.

At a certain point, abuse from progressives is just the boy who cried wolf.  They label everyone who dares to criticize Sanders/Warren/AOC the worst person ever and try to harass him/her off the site.  Like I don't care.  This happens when you engage in political arguments with bad-faith posters.  They're going to be extremely disingenuous, and mock you, and lie about you.  My posts stand on their own.

I actually like how Pete handles this at his events.  The Sanders crew has been showing up to every Pete event to shout and wave signs and banners with lies and calling him all sorts of nasty names.  He just talks down to them like the children they are, calmly refutes their arguments, and lets it roll off him.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Please do explain why the US can't have universal healthcare like every single other developed country in the world.

This is the kind of disingenuous argument I'm talking about.

A
The Democratic Party has been pushing universal health care since at least the Carter administration, when Kennedy and Carter battled over it.  Hillary Clinton pushed a universal health care bill in 1993.  Barack Obama wanted a public option in the ACA, and in fact this was passed by Pelosi and the house.  Hillary Clinton ran on a public option in 2016, and nearly every candidate is running on some variation of a public option (including, now, Warren).

B
Bernie likes to lie that "every single other developed country in the world" has single payer, like his M4A plan.  This is completely false.  Only the UK, Canada, Taiwan, and South Korea have single-payer systems, and these are very different from Bernie's proposed system.  When you think of countries like Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, France, etc. these have wildly different health care systems but all have some combination of public and private insurance for public and private hospitals and providers.  They vary in the degree of utilization for government services.  But they are all far more similar to the systems proposed by Biden, Buttigieg, Clinton, Obama, etc. than to what Bernie has proposed.

So yes, I want us to have universal health care similar to what the vast majority of developed nations have.  That's why I support Biden and defend Buttigieg.  A public option is universal health care.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Please do explain why the US can't have universal healthcare like every single other developed country in the world.

This is the kind of disingenuous argument I'm talking about.

A
The Democratic Party has been pushing universal health care since at least the Carter administration, when Kennedy and Carter battled over it.  Hillary Clinton pushed a universal health care bill in 1993.  Barack Obama wanted a public option in the ACA, and in fact this was passed by Pelosi and the house.  Hillary Clinton ran on a public option in 2016, and nearly every candidate is running on some variation of a public option (including, now, Warren).

B
Bernie likes to lie that "every single other developed country in the world" has single payer, like his M4A plan.  This is completely false.  Only the UK, Canada, Taiwan, and South Korea have single-payer systems, and these are very different from Bernie's proposed system.  When you think of countries like Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, France, etc. these have wildly different health care systems but all have some combination of public and private insurance for public and private hospitals and providers.  They vary in the degree of utilization for government services.  But they are all far more similar to the systems proposed by Biden, Buttigieg, Clinton, Obama, etc. than to what Bernie has proposed.

So yes, I want us to have universal health care similar to what the vast majority of developed nations have.  That's why I support Biden and defend Buttigieg.  A public option is universal health care.

You honestly think either of your Gods will actually do anything for a public option?

Hmm let's see.  On the one hand you have Joe Biden, who was VP in the administration that expended 100% of its political capital trying to get universal health care done, and Nancy Pelosi who passed universal health care in the House.

On the other you have a guy who's introduced the same plan every year for the last 40 years with zero effort to actually flesh it out, add any practical/financial details, or build support for it.  A guy who, when asked how he would get it passed in Congress, couldn't come up with an answer better than "a big movement to force Republicans to join us."  And a plan that even Elizabeth Warren, who is far more intelligent than Bernie, couldn't figure out how to realistically pay for -- in fact she tanked her campaign trying to do so.

Who is more likely to actually get done what they promise on health care?  Surely you can see why I believe it's the former.

[GeneralMacArthur]

And then said administration proceeded to use a plan orginally proposed by Nixon, Gingrich and Grassley.

Remind me what party those three belong to.

Were you alive in 2009?  Do you remember what a disaster health care was before then, and how close we came to having absolutely zero reform?

Like what did you want Obama to do?
Do you understand how many lives the ACA has saved?
Do you understand that even just passing the ACA was one of the biggest fights in American history and required devastating, crippling sacrifices from the Democratic Party that we're still reeling from ten years later?

Also, comparing any contemporary politics to Richard Nixon, or any pre-Reagan GOP politician, is silly.  The Republican party lurched extremely far to the right in the 80s and 90s.  Nixon and his policies would be laughed out of the party today.  Also remember that Nixon had to work with a solid D congress and his policies often reflect that.

It's very frustrating to me, as someone who followed the Obamacare debate extremely closely, to see all the gaslighting and lying going on these days.  Like this was one of the most difficult political fights ever and the Democrats sacrificed everything to win it by the skin of their teeth, and ten years later we have this whole movement of people saying the party is awful because we didn't fight hard enough and didn't pass a good enough plan.

I mean we had 60 Senate seats in 2008, and this was such a severe fight that a year later a Republican got elected in Massachusetts on a single-issue stop-universal-health-care campaign.  And we didn't fight hard enough?  We didn't sacrifice enough?

[GeneralMacArthur]

And then said administration proceeded to use a plan orginally proposed by Nixon, Gingrich and Grassley.

Remind me what party those three belong to.

Were you alive in 2009?  Do you remember what a disaster health care was before then, and how close we came to having absolutely zero reform?

Like what did you want Obama to do?
Do you understand how many lives the ACA has saved?
Do you understand that even just passing the ACA was one of the biggest fights in American history and required devastating, crippling sacrifices from the Democratic Party that we're still reeling from ten years later?

Also, comparing any contemporary politics to Richard Nixon, or any pre-Reagan GOP politician, is silly.  The Republican party lurched extremely far to the right in the 80s and 90s.  Nixon and his policies would be laughed out of the party today.  Also remember that Nixon had to work with a solid D congress and his policies often reflect that.

It's very frustrating to me, as someone who followed the Obamacare debate extremely closely, to see all the gaslighting and lying going on these days.  Like this was one of the most difficult political fights ever and the Democrats sacrificed everything to win it by the skin of their teeth, and ten years later we have this whole movement of people saying the party is awful because we didn't fight hard enough and didn't pass a good enough plan.

I mean we had 60 Senate seats in 2008, and this was such a severe fight that a year later a Republican got elected in Massachusetts on a single-issue stop-universal-health-care campaign.  And we didn't fight hard enough?  We didn't sacrifice enough?

You finished?

I noticed you didn't even address my point at all. Not that it's out of the norm.

Did I miss something?  I thought your point was we can't trust anyone other than Sanders to deliver on universal health care, because the last time they tried it they gave us the ACA which you're labeling as Nixoncare.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Only General MacArthur could have made a thread about a legitimately troubling trend among many hardcore Bernie supporters that ended up having us mostly focus on the problems of OP himself.

An important reminder about how the messenger can matter as much as the message, a truism that obviously applies to more than just the OP.

It's MacArthur derangement syndrome.  Go look through the tone and effort level of the posts I've made in this thread, and compare it to the responses I've gotten and how I've been treated.

There's a handful of posters on this board who pop up every time I want to talk about legitimately troubling things I'm seeing from the Sanders campaign -- things that, if 2016 is anything to go by, could be a serious problem for Democrats -- and crash the thread to tell everyone what a horrible scumbag I am and how I'm just some madman consumed with hatred for Sanders.  And I can't even defend myself or try to get the thread back on track because the whole board just gangs up on me like you're doing.

I know it's fun to hate on someone.  Much more fun than civil discussion.  And it's rare for anyone to bother defending me, so my harassers get the benefit of social proof.  But this board would be better if y'all didn't just automatically treat me like crap.

[GeneralMacArthur]

And then said administration proceeded to use a plan orginally proposed by Nixon, Gingrich and Grassley.

Remind me what party those three belong to.

Were you alive in 2009?  Do you remember what a disaster health care was before then, and how close we came to having absolutely zero reform?

Like what did you want Obama to do?
Do you understand how many lives the ACA has saved?
Do you understand that even just passing the ACA was one of the biggest fights in American history and required devastating, crippling sacrifices from the Democratic Party that we're still reeling from ten years later?

Also, comparing any contemporary politics to Richard Nixon, or any pre-Reagan GOP politician, is silly.  The Republican party lurched extremely far to the right in the 80s and 90s.  Nixon and his policies would be laughed out of the party today.  Also remember that Nixon had to work with a solid D congress and his policies often reflect that.

It's very frustrating to me, as someone who followed the Obamacare debate extremely closely, to see all the gaslighting and lying going on these days.  Like this was one of the most difficult political fights ever and the Democrats sacrificed everything to win it by the skin of their teeth, and ten years later we have this whole movement of people saying the party is awful because we didn't fight hard enough and didn't pass a good enough plan.

I mean we had 60 Senate seats in 2008, and this was such a severe fight that a year later a Republican got elected in Massachusetts on a single-issue stop-universal-health-care campaign.  And we didn't fight hard enough?  We didn't sacrifice enough?

You finished?

I noticed you didn't even address my point at all. Not that it's out of the norm.

Did I miss something?  I thought your point was we can't trust anyone other than Sanders to deliver on universal health care, because the last time they tried it they gave us the ACA which you're labeling as Nixoncare.

Nah.

My point, if you bothered to read, was that Obamacare was a plan adopted from Nixon, Gingrich and Grassley and I asked you to remind me what partythey were from. Then you went on some sort of tirade that didn't even bother to deny it was  Republican plan.

Obamacare is a smorgasbord of ideas, many of which have been seen in other plans, others of which are original to the ACA.

Yes, it bears some resemblance to the plans proposed by Republicans in the 70s.
It also bears resemblance to Romneycare.
It also shares many common elements with HillaryCare and the health care plans pushed by the Carter white house.

I'm not denying that.  But I assumed you had a reason for bringing that up?

[GeneralMacArthur]

Three pages in and still not a single Sanders supporter has condemned or otherwise said that he disagrees with what these jerks did at New York.
Depressing but predictable.

Alright, fine.

The original subjects of the thread are certified assclowns.  So is General MacArthur (and his "woe is me" act in this thread doesn't change that).  And so was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

Satisfied?

What, if anything, would you recommend the Sanders campaign do to stop these kinds of incidents?

Why is it only the Sanders campaign that consistently exhibits this kind of behavior?

My recommendation would be to:

• Publicly ask his supporters to STOP, and condemn this kind of behavior when it becomes a story.  I don't care how he does it.  Pick out some particularly egregious incident and turn it into a Sister Soulja thing.
• Replace the belligerent Twitter trolls running his campaign (Sirota, Gray, Turner, etc.) with professional, respectable, well-behaved staff.  They don't have to be suits, they just have to not be assholes.
• Try to make amends with the other candidates, and the low-paid hard-working staff at the DNC, the WFP, state Democratic parties, and other liberal organizations.  It is mostly low-level people and volunteers who have to deal with abuse from his campaign and supporters.
• Stop using us-vs-them, everyone-except-me-is-corrupt language about the Democratic party.  This only encourages his supporters to see everyone else in the primary as an enemy and treat them just as badly as the Trump supporters do.
• When conspiracy theories featuring Sanders or his campaign pop up on the radar, come out publicly and put the kibosh on them.  He's become a useful idiot for the Republicans and the Russians because when they use him to concoct conspiracy theories to divide our party, he plays along.

If Sanders did even, like, one of these things, my respect for him would double overnight.

If he did all five he might reach Warren-tier respect levels where I think she's a good person who just has bad policy ideas and some dumb populist tactics.

I don't think he will do any of this, though, because the truth is that these kinds of incidents are the bread and butter of the Sanders "movement" and this is a feature, not a bug, of the campaign.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Three pages in and still not a single Sanders supporter has condemned or otherwise said that he disagrees with what these jerks did at New York.
Depressing but predictable.

Alright, fine.

The original subjects of the thread are certified assclowns.  So is General MacArthur (and his "woe is me" act in this thread doesn't change that).  And so was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

Satisfied?

What, if anything, would you recommend the Sanders campaign do to stop these kinds of incidents?

Why is it only the Sanders campaign that consistently exhibits this kind of behavior?

My recommendation would be to:

• Publicly ask his supporters to STOP, and condemn this kind of behavior when it becomes a story.  I don't care how he does it.  Pick out some particularly egregious incident and turn it into a Sister Soulja thing.
• Replace the belligerent Twitter trolls running his campaign (Sirota, Gray, Turner, etc.) with professional, respectable, well-behaved staff.  They don't have to be suits, they just have to not be assholes.
• Try to make amends with the other candidates, and the low-paid hard-working staff at the DNC, the WFP, state Democratic parties, and other liberal organizations.  It is mostly low-level people and volunteers who have to deal with abuse from his campaign and supporters.
• Stop using us-vs-them, everyone-except-me-is-corrupt language about the Democratic party.  This only encourages his supporters to see everyone else in the primary as an enemy and treat them just as badly as the Trump supporters do.
• When conspiracy theories featuring Sanders or his campaign pop up on the radar, come out publicly and put the kibosh on them.  He's become a useful idiot for the Republicans and the Russians because when they use him to concoct conspiracy theories to divide our party, he plays along.

If Sanders did even, like, one of these things, my respect for him would double overnight.

If he did all five he might reach Warren-tier respect levels where I think she's a good person who just has bad policy ideas and some dumb populist tactics.

I don't think he will do any of this, though, because the truth is that these kinds of incidents are the bread and butter of the Sanders "movement" and this is a feature, not a bug, of the campaign.

I'm actually not opposed to any of those ideas.  Most of the reason I jumped on the Warren train early in the cycle is that I have more faith in her to surround herself with right-minded people and not let her campaign be overshadowed by bad-faith actors.  I get the impression that Sanders is not on the up-and-up on many of the people trying to co-opt his message, Cenk Uygur being a prime example.  That is much of why I've hesitated to support Sanders outright, although barring a surprise Warren comeback I may be resigned to voting for him if the race comes down to him and Biden.

Without defending the behavior of some of Bernie's more eccentric supporters, I do believe that these people, by and large, represent a vocal minority of his base.  If you want to argue that Sanders hasn't done enough to keep his supporters in line or refocus his message to the issues that brought him to the spotlight in 2016, fine.  He has not, to my knowledge, incited these types of stunts or encouraged his supporters to go after other campaigns with violence and hostility.  There is only one candidate in this election who has a history of doing exactly that, and that is the incumbent president.

There are a couple of things that lead me to draw a direct line between the Bernie Bros and Sanders personally.

A
The first is that, in the 2016 campaign, for those paying attention there was a pretty clear pipeline from the internet's mouth to Bernie's ears.  By that I mean that attacks would be originated in alt-left media, Twitter, Reddit, 4chan, and tried out, and the ones that gained traction would be echoed by Sanders.  Later on in the campaign when they turned to conspiracy theories about the DNC "rigging" the election, Sanders and his campaign staff would frequently echo their complaints.

For instance, I forget which primary it was, but Sanders lost it and the Bernie Bros on Twitter made up some claim that the DNC had been rigging it in one way or another.  There was no basis for this except some inflammatory made-up stuff, but there were Bernie and his staff going to the media and complaining about "irregularities" and "wanting the process to be fair."  I apologize for the vagueness but I'm too tired to remember the primary, maybe it was Arizona?

Anyway, we've seen this again in 2020, except it's more obvious because his 2020 campaign staff spends all day on Twitter.  So you can just directly observe them retweeting and interacting with the likes of Uygur, Kulinski, Sunkara, Greenwald, etc. as well as encouraging the Bros and echoing their attack lines.

In short, the complaint is that they can't claim ignorance of what their supporters are up to because they're not only monitoring the situation but implicitly encouraging them by echoing their home-brewed conspiracy theories and talking points, among other dogwhistles.


B
There were several incidents in 2016 where the Sanders campaign directly instigated this behavior.  For instance, here is a direct quote from the complaint issued by the Nevada State Democratic Party after the Sanders delegates rioted at their convention:

The Sanders Campaign spent its time either ignoring or profiting from the chaos it did much to create and nothing to diminish or mitigate. It was clear to the NSDP that part of the approach by the Sanders Campaign was to employ these easily-incensed delegates as shock troops to sway the convention proceedings. At the very least, these delegates became a way for the Sanders Campaign to seek the advantage of disruption at any particular moment while trying to disavow any responsibility for their actions even as it was ongoing. At no time did any Sanders representative make anything more than token gestures towards peace in the hall, and at the times of most intense crisis offered little more than shrugs and smirks.

The most egregious instance of the Sanders Campaign inciting disruption — and yes, violence — came as the State Convention’s Credentials Committee completed its work. Adam Gillette, part of National Delegate Operations Team for the official Sanders Campaign, drafted and arranged for a member of that committee to attempt to deliver an incendiary, inaccurate, and wholly unauthorized “minority report” charging that the Credentials Committee had fraudulently denied 64 Sanders delegates their eligibility. The final delegate count had provided the Clinton Campaign with a 33 delegate advantage in the hall; one can imagine the rage occasioned by this inflammatory charge, tossed into the tinderbox of a tense convention hall.

 

This hasn't been a thing in 2020 yet, but again, we haven't hit fever pitch yet.  In 2016 things didn't get truly out of hand until voting started.  I continue to see signs that we're headed down the exact same road.


C
At the DNC convention in 2016, the Sanders campaign was fully aware of the behavior of its supporters, and utilized the threat of riotous behavior as blackmail to try to extract concessions from the DNC.

So not only were they aware of the behavior, but they knew it was bad -- and took advantage of that to blackmail the DNC.  In the end the DNC gave Sanders what he wanted, but his supporters crashed the DNC anyway.  You literally couldn't hear half of the speeches because they were chanting their obnoxious slogans the entire team.  The Sanders campaign obviously knew this was happening, and didn't do a damn thing to stop it.


So in conclusion, the Sanders campaign is 100% aware that this kind of thing is happening, and I'm confident they are aware of how widespread it is (since they monitor alt-left-politics Twitter/media very closely) but they
at best, do nothing to prevent it
at worst, instigate and inflame it

It's a pattern I witnessed over and over and over again in 2016, and to a lesser extent in 2017-2019 (as Sanders continued to encourage hostility towards the party), and I'm now sitting here observing the same pattern going into 2020 and wondering, are we really going to let this happen again?  Fool me once, shame on you...

[GeneralMacArthur]

Same type of person as this...

https://twitter.com/JustinTX_20/status/1206426098982162432?s=20

Yeah, keep tarring Sanders supporters with the same brush, great way to win them over.

At this point I'm just convinced that progressives should start their own party.

Why is it that you always see Sanders supporters doing this and never supporters of any other candidate.

Also this guy is running for Congress, he's not just a random Twitter account.