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I’ll add that Bernie would have been a perfect fit to mitigate the cynicism of some of these Trump voters, if racism and tribalism against the perceived “haves” weren’t a more powerful motivator for them than their own well-being.

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It's hard to tell what might be the more powerful motivator, especially now since there will not be anyone running out there who is going to actually improve these folks well being.

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No improvement relative to Trump? None at all? Not one jot or tittle or iota?

I'm sorry not everyone got what they wanted; I honestly want everyone to get what they want if it's not that bad. I supported Sen. Warren and hoped that Sen. Sanders wouldn't run to compete with her because I thought she had a chance and he didn't, ever—you may well disagree with me about that, but that's my honest opinion of the prospects of any Jew who proclaimed himself a Socialist for years, asI think the best political thinker ever was Pavlov—but just as I'd vote for Trump with a clean conscience if Richard Spencer were the only alternative….

I hope that you get a chance to be pleasantly surprised; I hope the same for me as well, though my base-level expectation is that at least being aware of the greater world won't quite feel like having to trudge down to the cellar every evening to fetch a jar of pickles and to get my heart cut-out.

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I just don't know about the electability of Sanders. I also wanted to see Warren as the nominee, even with this country's misogynistic bias. (Probably worse than the anti-semitism, but I've got no way to measure it.) Of course, nearly everyone including myself thought Trump was nearly unelectable and we were all wrong...

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I was having a hard time reading Tweets from Bernie supporters today. It got to a point where Biden was called a "conservative Republican right-winger" -- a notion not well tethered to reality. And I don't understand how it has taken root: We really only have to look back 3 years to find Biden as the #2 guy in an administration that passed the ACA, jammed through Dreamer protections, signed the Paris climate change deal -- all improvements for what we might call folks -- and never produced one corruption scandal. Plus Warren and Bernie stand a 95% chance of being influential during a Biden Administration, and a 101% chance of being zero influence in a Trump Administration. So I just don't understand the "now nothing will improve, so forget it" approach that I see online (and among a couple IRL friends). I am really hoping that is a post-campaign funk that does not keep people home on election day.

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I can’t stand Biden, but I will pull the lever for him primarily for two reasons: their names are Ginsburg and Breyer. I don’t want a 7-2 GOP SCOTUS coupled with 4 more years for Trump and cronies to suppress the vote. That would make it impossible to enact and uphold any of Bernie’s or Warren’s policies for at least a generation.

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Yeah, well said! I think across W's unpaid-for Iraq adventure and Trump's cheap mobster presidency, we have forever lost our position as undisputed political and financial leader of the free world -- so the question in front of us becomes: But do we firmly install a hopeless new Feudalism here for the next 20-30 years, or, like, spend the next 5-15 years fighting like hell to beat that trend back into submission? That is what we are voting on in 2020.

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One of the problems with taking the position that Bernie is/was the political Messiah is that you're left with not much to do after he gives up. That's the impetus for the conspiratorial thinking and doom and loathing the Democrats more than the Republicans--they were supposed to be on YOUR side , dammit!

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And let's not forget anti-Semitism!

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