Many #Clintonistas seemingly think Hillary's shit doesn't stink

Riffing on Doug Henwood's book cover,
no, Hillary, it's not your turn, and also no,
neoliberal gender feminism Clintonistas,
it's not your token's turn, either.
Book for sale here, with other swag.

After yet another few days of "fun" on Facebook, which have me close to using FB Purity filer setting, that's my conclusion.

(Update: Per lies being spread around, mainly by the various kitchen sinks being thrown at Bernie Sanders, plus commenters on websites lying, claiming not to recognize the term Clintonista and more, many Clintonistas think their own shit doesn't stink either. The latest evidence is a screed from a long-time Harris County, Texas Democratic volunteer activist, whom I have blasted out of the water, along with Phil Bump of The Fix. More below.)

Per a Facebook status update of mine late in January:

I loooovvveee (the subset of) Clintonistas who appear to:

1. Assume that I think Sanders is perfect, which as all the blog post below, or this one about his big Georgetown speech, will show is untrue;

2. Think I'm unaware of some parts of Sanders' voting records, like the gun lawsuit immunity. Since I've blogged about this, even calling him a gun nut (later nuanced to being a gun nut on the left side of the aisle), then called him Just.Another.Politician.™ for how he said he'd support revising that bill, but only with amendments, that's obviously not the case.

2A. Don't know that I'm aware of ALL his history, going back to when he was a real socialist and how he's not so much today, that he's really no more than a left-side Democrat, and how I'm more socialist than he is on health care issues;

2B. Don't know that I know he's a semi-warhawk, just less of one than Clinton, when I've blogged about his sucking on the military teat, or how I've detailed how he's a semi-warhawk;

3. Come off as patronizing, even if they don't mean to, and never accept that they might appear to be patronizing, even if they aren't actually;

4. The usual, who don't know that my support for Sanders, at least as of now, is limited to the Democratic primary season only, and then, IF they realize what that actually means, raise the usual scare tactics about third-party voting.

Two other notes.

A. I'm not calling all Clinton backers "Clintonistas." For some, it's shallow support based on name recognition of her among Democratic candidates. For other backers, it may be more serious, but without the invective against Sanders backers, nor the near-total unwillingness to dialogue about anything negative, from negative polling numbers to negative email server news, and in between.

B. I'm not denying that "Berniebros" exist. However, I think they're a smaller set of Sanders' backers than Clintonistas are of hers. Also, if "vocal" or even "voluble" includes Inside the Beltway pundits and their "framing," and not just a Sanders site on Reddit, then Clintonistas are certainly more voluble. Besides, some alleged Berniebros either don't exist or are actually women.

I've already moved one in-the-tank Clintonista who will deny it, but is a diehard Hillaryite because of the "it's her turn" argument, from "friend" to "acquaintance." That is a minimum step with others, including secularists like the person above and a scientist who says, when presented with data contrary to his Clinton claims, that he doesn't know why people need to put Clinton down. 

All of this leads me to believe that a certain, and fairly large, subset of Clintonistas think her shit doesn't stink, that their arguments for her shit not stinking also don't stink, and that they assume every single Sanders supporter is a 19-year-old Berniebro living in his parents' basement while going to community college, and whose level of political information comes from little other than Sanders press releases.

And, Clintonistas who cite "Mr. X says this" or "Ms. Y who says that" then don't like to dialogue when their statements are put into context, including me pointing out how many of the Inside the Beltway crowd are wrong, often with clear neoliberal leanings, who pretend that the DNC isn't trying to stack the deck against Sanders.

Per these later paragraphs and bullet point No. 3, I think many Clintonistas don't care that they are patronizing, or when they're not actually patronizing, that they look that way.

And, especially for the "it's her turn" subset of Clintonistas, I do think there's a mix of desperation and anger in the air, anger such that, beyond a certain point, arguments against, or jokes about, Clinton, are inevitably going to be called sexist. I've already been on the receiving end of that.

There's certainly desperation behind the "he's better qualified" claim. First, it's just not provable. Second, if we go by years of service, Sanders has more years of service, in more different offices (mayor, Representative, Senator vs. Senator and Secretary of State). Plus, Sanders as a mayor has held elective executive office.

It's also intellectually dishonest to claim that, just because she hasn't been indicted, that Hillary Clinton doesn't have ethics issues. It could simply that both Hillary and Bill are "too big to indict." Ken Silverstein recently examined just how skeezy the Clinton Foundation is, for example. Of course Obama's DOJ wouldn't touch it, if it had done anything rising to the level of financial criminality. Indeed, Silverstein notes that Dear Leader gave part of his Nobel money to the foundation for Haiti relief. And a GOP prez likely wouldn't, either. That said, the foundation DID refile wrong tax forms. And, yes, Clintonistas, they were wrong. And, no, that didn't happen by accident.

Beond that, on the "no indictment" claim? Per a Tweet of mine, if that's the case, then one Richard Milhous Nixon was an ethical politician.

But, criminality isn't the only case in which a politician can be unethical.

Along this line, per Doug Henwood, it IS fair to blame Hillary for Bill's unethical politics. And, per an old cliche, which I've used before, Dick Morris noting she became "the manager of their joint political career" part illustrates well that Hillary Clinton wore the pants in that family.

When I first started this blog post, I said I wasn't at the point of unfollowing on Facebook those who are otherwise at least vaguely liberal, and/or secularists or alleged skeptics, but I'm getting closer to moving more and more of you to "acquaintance" level on Facebook, at a minimum.

I now change that, as I just did that. I've now blocked a friend of a friend, for either being an online troll in general, or else a Clintonista troll in general, and telling blatant lies even after being called out on them. Per this blog post, I've called out others on the latest lie, that Sanders took in more and/or spent more in Iowa.

Per a new, Feb. 10 discussion on Facebook, another Clintonista is now claiming equivalence between Iraq and Afghanistan, followed by the claim that Iraq was justified at the time. Well, in reality, 21 Democratic senators not named Clinton, along with Independent Jeffords and even GOPer Chafee, weren't hypnotized by Shrub, unlike Hillary, who is now claiming that. I expect to be blocking another Clintonista soon.

I think beyond the "it's her turn" take of some subset of feminists, that there's tribalism galore here. Is there tribalism among Sanders supporters? To a fair degree, yes. However, there's no 'it's her turn" subcurrent.

Next, of course, is the claim that Clinton is the most likely to win the general election. This is wrong, at least of this moment. Sanders outpolls her, in an average of polls, in competitions against, Trump, Cruz or Rubio. Yet, even a physicist at Sandia claims Hillary's the best candidate to defeat the GOP. That just shows that even scientists and "scientific skeptics" can be just as tribalist as anybody else, something I've said more than once before here.

Not every Clintonista is of this nature, though. Other Clinton backers, with or without that handle, have made "pragmatism" into a shibboleth, in place of substantive, consistent campaign positions. 

This even extends to Krugman, as even he is talking of the stereotypical "Berniebro" while becoming ever more an Inside the Beltway tool of Team Clinton. Thank doorknob I stopped regularly reading ANY of the NYT columnists, even him, on anything near a regular basis, though.

And, as far as their claims to pragmatism, they ignore that Sanders as mayor, AND also as Representative/Senator, whether pragmatic or whatever, has gotten a lot accomplished.

In contrast, Hillary Clinton as senator has a relatively thin track record. (Not as thin as Barack Obama, but, Clinton wasn't making the "pragmatism" or "get things done" in 2008.) Twenty Dems responded to a "takedown" rhetorical question from Carly Fiorina about what Clinton had done in general. Almost all talked about her time as either Secretary of State or as First Lady. Few talked about her time as Senator, and even when they did, it was more in terms of platitudes than actual legislation.

This all extends to Clintonista, or establishmentarian, media coverage, too.

First, it's arguable, per a bar graph about halfway down this piece, that there's been big media coverage bias against Sanders in some ways.

Some specific examples come not just from the establishmentarian punditry, but the neo-establishmentarian data crunchers.

Nate Silver tries to throw cold water on Sanders' chances, but take note that with all of his accuracy, Nate also has a whiff of Inside the Beltway cologne about him at times.

Throwing shade back at Nate, per NPR, Clinton had a 100-plus superdelegate lead on Obama early in the 2008 cycle. Yet more on that, with specific numbers, here. We know how that ended. Clinton's lead is bigger now because she announced earlier to what seemed less formidable opposition. (Remember how 2004 VP nominee John Edwards was the big tout before Babygate hit.)

Meanwhile, Silver's main polling analysis rival, Sam Wang, is claiming Iowa is must-win for Sanders. (Silver does, elsewhere, too.) He not only doesn't make that claim for Clinton, he makes it for no GOP candidate, either.

And, he goes beyond that to claim that Sanders must win by "a fairly large margin," essentially rejecting everything that Goodman and Jacobin state will happen, especially with good performances in both states. This simply isn't true, I don't think.

Sanders, per a post of mine yesterday about superdelegates, momentum and exposure, does need to win one of the two. (If he lost New Hampshire, it would be bad anyway.) But, no, he doesn't have to win Iowa, IMO. He does have to finish respectably second if he doesn't win, though.

But, let's say Sanders wins Iowa. Just wins it, but not by a huge margin. And then strongly wins New Hampshire.

Suddenly, in such a scenario, South Carolina is must-win territory for Clinton. I expect her to win it anyway, but ... it becomes a must-win state for her.

So, even the data crunchers will engage in "framing," folks, and don't forget it for a second.

For more on this issue, see what I eventually broke out into a separate piece, that Sanders, not Clinton, is the "can-do" candidate.  

In any case, remember that I'm only a Sanders supporter right now for the Democratic primaries.

And, for people on this blog, Facebook, or whatever, individually, I'm pretty anti-tribalist, unless there's a tribe of anti-tribalists.

But, I am a deliberate contrarian who likes giving you Clintonistas more and more of a smackdown the more and more you yawp (directly or indirectly, consciously or subconsciously) about it being "her turn."

And, thanks to Blogger's "featured post" option, I think this baby is going to stay featured for a while, just to piss off the Clintonistas even more.

And, given that active or inactive members of a current group of "progressive" Texas bloggers include a bankster in love with Clinton, and an old-hippie atheist who was OK with Kinky Friedman supporting school prayer, this is why I"m not only a Democrat, I'm also not a "liberal" or a "progressive." Look to the top to see how I self-identify, if I need a label.