As the resident 2+2 liberal, I've made no secret of the fact that my political leanings are more toward the left. (I like to joke with my friends that I'm an endangered species - probably the only "librul" living in my [heavily Trump] state. However, there are limits to my liberalism …

If Bernie Sanders is the Democratic Party's nominee, my three options on election day are:

(1.) Vote for Trump (very unlikely)
(2.) Vote for Bernie Sanders (see next option)
(3.) Slit my wrists.

Most of you youngs weren't around back then, but I remember 1972 when the Democrats nominated a way-left candidate - George McGovern - who was a "capitalist exploiter of the masses" when compared to Bernie Sanders. In the general election, McGovern lost 49 of the 50 states to Richard Nixon.

The good news is that Trump will win a second term, your life will continue on its current prosperous path, and 4 years from now the Bernie Bros will have been put back in the hole they crawled out of.

Suicide is an inferior option to simply ignoring politics and living your life. It's fine, just relax and carry on.

I already decided, through gritted teeth and overwhelming sense of resignation, to vote for Trump if it comes down to Bernie v. Trump.

DJ, I hope the title was a joke. Get someone to talk to if you're really feeling suicidal.

And the masks continue to come off.

I too, through gritted teeth, have chosen to vote for Trump over Bernie.

I have never once pretended I had any love at all for Bernie Sanders and I consistently said I would vote for Trump over him and anyone else in the Democratic field over him.

I didn't want to contemplate the choice between Bernie and Trump but when it became a real possibility it didn't take much time for me to say Trump.

Trump has no real beliefs to speak of other than personal interest. That limits the amount of damage he does.

Bernie is a true believer, a believer in a brand of economics and a naive conception of America that I want no part of. That toxic mix of sense of purpose&mission and naivety that appeals so much to so much of his base is what terrifies me.

It doesn't help he and his supporters (if you really care, just trace how some of his supporters feel about lawyers when I posited lawyers are by and large liberal) basically consider people like me (banker/lawyer/trader by training working for major firms) the incarnation of evil no matter what we actually do, including what we do outside of work.

It seems clear that the thread title is hyperbolic, but it's not really an appropriate joke for a thread title, so I've changed it.

Title was DOA

So heres the deal. Bernie is not a socialist, he simply wants poor people to have healthcare and a living wage. He wants to pay for it through modest taxes on wallstreet. The real sad truth is he has 0% chance of passing medicare for all, or any of his wish list. None of the dems have any chance of passing healthcare because the Republicans will clearly obstruct every single positive bill.

So you can either vote for the guy whos power will be limited to getting immigrants out of concentration camps and helping the environment through EOs.

So you can either support Bernie for a couple small incremental changes, or you can support the end of democracy after Trump wins the presidency, house, and senate after 30ish million sander supports stay home. Think he's acting like an authoritarian now? Imagine how he will act after the election.

This seems mostly wrong to me. Trump clearly believes in building a wall for example. He clearly has strong and idiosyncratic views about foreign policy. Trump's views aren't the construction of a conservative think tank, and yeah I think I agree that he's driven as much by narcissism as ideology, but he does have views.

What limits the amount of damage Trump has done or can do is not a lack of beliefs but the nature of the political system. There's only so much he can do without the consent of congress and the courts, although of course he's pushed the boundaries as far as that goes, and the Republican Senate doesn't do much to limit him.

But those same constraints will also limit how much President Sanders could do. Particularly if Congress is split. I think those factors are easily way more significant than some individual difference in ideological commitment.

My position is roughly: there are policy positions on Bernie's website that I think are probably really really bad ideas, but I'd crawl over broken glass to vote for him over Trump :P

It would be a slightly harder decision if I thought he could just enact most of them by fiat, but maybe not that much harder.

Well, if you could guarantee that the top 1% would just say GG, we will hand over some of our immense wealth for the good of all, then I would be more on board with this idea.

In practice, it is my working assumption the wealthy will find ways to keep all their wealth, and we will all be worse for it.

With Trump, minus the chance of us getting into some major war, it seems stuff will just continue as is for 4 more years, and then (hopefully) a moderate Republican or Democrat can step in and restore normalcy.

But yeah, I would like some way for the system to become more healthy and wealth to be distributed more equitably, without a major revolution. But maybe the incentive structures are such this really is impossible.

IMO Trump believes in building a wall in large part because when he has his rallies, and says he is going to build a wall everyone cheers. If everyone boo'd I think he would lose interest in that rhetorical approach real soon.

This isn't an original idea, I have read or heard plenty of other people make this point. But Trump really does seem to treat politics like a WWE show or stand up comedy, where he throws a bunch of stuff against a wall and runs with the stuff that gives him the most positive feedback among his supporters.

Imagine claiming you're a liberal and having 'vote Donald Trump' as a greater than zero option

Also, when I say "equity" I pretty much mean the opposite of how the term is viewed in common parlance in progressive circles. I have expounded on this much in other forums, so no need to kick that can down the street again, but progressive socially focused "equity" movements in reality are methods for the elite to consolidate wealth under a moral guise, which is more or less my working definition of neoliberalism.

I can just easily rephrase it as Trump's obsessive narcissism imposes limits on the amount of political risk he's willing to take. Implicitly, the true limits are what our system and we are willing to let him get away with.

We see this with how he's "handled" Iran/Israel/NK and so on. He'll poke the hornet's nest and then just run once challenged.

His complete lack of interest in details also means his underlings have slipped through a lot of details that basically preserved the status quo more than once. (See NK/NAFTA)

Another dimension/angle of this is Trump's narcissism is way easier, and less costly to satisfy. Trump will claim a win if you even give him an empty promise (see China/NK/NAFTA negotiations). As long as you allow him to claim a win, he really doesn't give a crap what happens. According to Sanders and his supporters, Sanders will not rest until the country is fundamentally changed.

Well, I am probably a liberal in the classical sense, eg. belief in liberty and equality over equity and inclusion, which are more socialistic principles. But yeah, the way the term is used in US parlance (basically as a synonym for progressive), I am not really a liberal.

It's undoubtedly true that Trump also wants to be popular, but the distinction doesn't really seem to make a difference, at least with regard to grizy's concerns. I also think Trump has a history of being interested in and caring about certain kinds of topics that belies the argument that he's purely driven by the attempt to be popular. See for example his full page ad about the central park five case. And of course, if he really wanted to maximize his popularity, he wouldn't have ended up with the specific set of views he's stuck to.

Time for another title change? "I'd rather live in a dictatorship than poor's get free healthcare" is one suggestion.

Voting for Bernie Sanders if he gets the nomination should not be an issue for a liberal. He's perfectly adequate. Barrack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, all the people you've trusted with your vote for POTUS in the past will vote for him. Note that Trump somehow managed to fail even this trivial test for conservatives as W Bush, HW Bush, McCain and Romney refused to vote for him.

Couple that with Trump's actual performance/abilities, he was ranked dead last among all presidents by historians in 2018 for intelligence, overall ability and integrity. The integrity rank is particularly impressive since the survey was BEFORE the Zelensky shakedown. Very little reason for a liberal to think that Sanders will somehow be worse. Especially given the off the bat guarantees you get with any dem (no straight Obamacare repeal, Obama era DACA status quo, supreme court).

Trump is one of the most dangerous presidents in history and ppl here are willing to vote for him over someone who advocates for the same policies that plays out in scandinavia, probably the best place on the planet. Trump lies about all and nothing, would take down the press and the courts in a heartbeat if he could, has clear symptoms of a personality disorder. Oh but sanders.

Cry me a river

so two presidential elections in a row where both parties field unattractive candidates.

trump is obviously a unique phenomenon....... but i do think this is where the D party is at these days. they need to "run from the center", "govern from the left". they seem to have this completely backwards, partly not by choice (with R senate, they can't "govern from the left")

...

GRIZZZZYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

- signed, a rich tech bro who is also the incarnation of evil for many Sanders supports and yet manages to avoid your pathetic persecution complex

Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds