Original sin watch: Sanders supporter complains to Josh!

MONDAY, MAY 2, 2016

Those People are dumb, genius says:
Josh Marshall has posted an email from a Sanders supporter who feels the game has been rigged against Sanders. This is his or her first example:
EMAILER (5/2/16): I know you’re not in love with Hillary, I’ve read your site daily since you started and I know you have deep reservations about Hilary, so I’m not coming from a place of saying you’re in the tank for her. But I do think you ignore some huge factors. One is the degree to which all those super delegates picking Hillary early on and thereby making her the front runner in the media, polls, etc. served as a self fulfilling prophecy. As you well know people want to vote for a winner. The Super Delegates allowed Hilary to jump out to a huge early lead which in turn supported numerous media outlets calling the Sanders campaign “insurgent,” “long shot,” etc. So to a degree all of these Super Delegates lining up for Hilary created a self fulfilling prophecy.
Whatever you think of the super-delegate system, that seems pretty silly. Here's why:

Sanders was called a "long shot" last summer because he was a long shot. "He started at three percent," Jane Sanders accurately said on last Thursday's Maddow Show. "And he's now at 49 percent, 50 percent, 51 percent in the polls. "So we've gone...Bernie has gone up 47 points since April last year in one year."

When you're starting at three percent, you are, in fact, a long shot! Sanders has made an incredible run. But he started as a very long shot. The super-delegates had little to do with that initial obvious fact.

It was the emailer's second point which made our analysts break out in hives and emit a loud piteous wail. In this, you see the original sin of our own self-impressed tribe:
EMAILER (continuing directly): There are other aspects of the game being “rigged” aside from the caucus system. For example, our educational systems in this country are so poor relative to other economically wealthy countries. We spend more per student than all but 4 small countries but generally rank in about 30th place for results. I believe many American voters lack even a rudimentary understanding of our system of government. My favorite example like yours is: “Keep government out of my Medicare!” Do you still have that photo?
In statements like this, our progressive tribe's hubris really starts to show. This is why we say that:

The emailer complains that the game was rigged against Sanders because our educational system is so bad! He or she then offers a stereotypical example of the Dumb Stupid Brainwashed Tea Party Rube, even as he or she repeats a bogus, cherry-picked claim about how bad our public schools are compared to schools in other nations.

In other words, this fiery progressive recites a piece of standard cant he himself has swallowed, even as he complains about how dumb The Others are. As he continues, he offers this:
EMAILER (continuing directly): Other examples: a widespread belief among Republican voters that the PBS television budget accounts for more than 50% of US Government spending.
Is there "a widespread belief among Republican voters that the PBS television budget accounts for more than 50% of US government spending?" We'd never heard that claim before, so we engaged the Google.

In 2012, CNN polled that very question. According to CNN's data, six percent of all respondents copped to that absurd idea, but only four percent of Republican respondents signed on to that claim. Warning to our cocksure progressive—at least in that CNN survey, Democrats may have been a little bit daffier on that matter than Republicans were.

(Apparently due to sample size, CNN didn't come up with a number for Democrats.)

Over here in our own flawless tribe, we've long been convinced of our own brilliance and goodness. The least humane among us have always felt sure of such things, ever since we alleged humans first crawled from the swamp.

The Others are stupid, inhuman and bad! It's the oldest known human belief, the one which leads to the wars.

We're sure the emailer is a good person. He or she ought to consider getting over him or herself. He or she ought to consider the possibility that all wisdom doesn't exist Over Here, with all the dumbness Over There among Those People, The Others.

In closing, let's recall that other key point. We liberals can swallow cant from elites and from our tribal authority figures, just the way The Others do.

In fact, it happens all the time. The emailer seemed to prove it.

WHAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT: Still a high-ranking favorite at Salon, even two days after posting:
We must shame dumb Trump fans: The white working class are not victims
It's not smug liberalism to point out Trump backers are low-educated. What's dangerous is to sympathize with them
DAVID MASCIOTRA
SATURDAY, APR 30, 2016 09:29 AM EDT
According to the photo Salon has chosen, they aren't just dumb, they're fat.

21 comments:

  1. Who understands relativity better? Democrats or Republicans? Liberals or conservatives?

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  2. It's relative. Depends on which you are.

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  3. The emailer Bob quotes makes a point that many of our citizens are low-info voters and attributes that to our poor educational system, which he defines (apparently inaccurately) by our 30th place ranking; however, the ranking he employs does not use politics as a criteria, which I think makes his argument weak. Indeed Ted Cruz is highly educated but clearly suffers from low information when it comes to policy, mistakenly believing that lower taxes lead to higher revenues, that social security will go bankrupt, that climate change is not real, etc

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    1. Ignorant Ted Cruz believes Social Security will go bankrupt, just because the Social Security acturies' official reports says that Social Security will go bankrupt! https://www.ssa.gov/oact/tr/2015/tr2015.pdf
      Hey, Cruz even believes he's a natural born citizen of the US just because he was an automatic US citizen at birth.

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    2. Ignorant David in Cal can't read and then strawmans Cruz birther bullshit, demonstrating what an insufferable and dishonest hack he is.

      E. CONCLUSION
      Under current law, the projected cost of Social Security increases faster than
      projected income through 2037 primarily because of the aging of the baby-
      boom generation and relatively low fertility since the baby-boom period.
      Cost will continue to grow faster than income after 2037, but to a lesser
      degree, due to increasing life expectancy. Based on the Trustees’ intermedi-
      ate assumptions, program cost exceeds non-interest income for 2015, as it
      has since 2010, and remains higher than non-interest income throughout the
      remainder of the 75-year projection period.
      If there were a change in law permitting the payment of currently scheduled
      benefits after DI’s current-law projected reserve depletion date of 2016 while
      leaving scheduled OASI benefits and combined OASDI scheduled revenues
      unchanged, then the projected theoretical combined OASI and DI Trust Fund
      asset reserves would increase through 2019, begin to decline in 2020, and
      become depleted and unable to pay scheduled benefits in full on a timely
      basis in 2034. At the time of depletion of these theoretical combined
      reserves, continuing income to the combined trust funds would be sufficient
      to pay 79percent of scheduled benefits. By 2089, continuing income equals
      about 73percent of program cost.
      The OASI Trust Fund and the DI Trust Fund are projected to have sufficient
      reserves to pay full benefits on time until 2035 and 2016, respectively. Legis-
      lative action is needed as soon as possible to prevent depletion of the DI
      Trust Fund reserves in 2016, at which time continuing income to the DI Trust
      Fund would be sufficient to pay 81percent of DI benefits.

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    3. Robert, I said SS would become bankrupt, not that it would unable to pay any benefits at all. When an organization can't fully pay its legal obligations, it's bankrupt.

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    4. Since social security is periodically adjusted to meet demographic realities, it will not ever be bankrupt. It is cruel to scare people into thinking the safety net will fail.

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    5. Anon 9:50 -- If anything is cruel, it's reality that's cruel. SS has always paid benefits out of SS assessments. Beginning 15 or 20 years from now, that won't be possible, without some change. Three things might change:
      1. Benefits might be cut
      2. Assessments might be increased
      3. Large amounts of money from the General Fiund might be contributed to SS each year.

      Nobody knows which of these will happen. So, someone planning their retirement ought to reckon with the possibility that SS benefits might be somewhat lower than current scale. In other words, save some money or get employment that will provide some sort of pension.

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    6. Bankrupt? I think that's just another way of saying the Treasury will make good on all of the money it owes to Social Security. You say that like it's a bad thing.

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    7. All the choices are bad. It's not like the Treasury has extra money lying around that they can ship over to SS. On the contrary, the federal deficit is predicted to rise sharply in the next few years. If the Treasury also contributes to SS, the deficit will be even bigger.

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    8. Without the word "might", David in Cal's conclusion is nothing but a house of cards. Shame on him.

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    9. Keep in mind that that according to David in Cal's tribe, running a deficit or increasing it is only bad when a Democrat occupies the White House. Compare the surplus that Clinton left Bush in 2000 with the deficit that Bush left Obama in 2008.

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    10. Compare "the Social Security acturies' official reports says that Social Security will go bankrupt!" which is not a conclusion the SS actuaries made in the 2015 Report to "I said the SS would become bankrupt."

      I correct my previous statement to add that David in Cal is a insufferable, dishonest weasel of a hack.

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    11. David in Cal you are completely wrong on SS! Wow you mislead like you breathe.

      The official report does not say SS will go bankrupt or anything even close to that. Only if economic growth is quite poor, then around 2034 it will pay 79% of scheduled benefits. Importantly that 79% of scheduled benefits is higher in real dollars than current benefits. So even in the case of very poor economic growth, people in 2034 and beyond will get more money than people do now! If economic growth is good, then SS will pay 100% of scheduled benefits for the next hundred years!

      David in Cal, you actually know all this, so to spout lies about SS like you do is a disturbing indication of your low character. You should be ashamed.

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  4. Yes, the system is rigged against people who get a minority of votes, as Sanders has. That's why he lost.

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  5. Wow. Bob can even beat down an anonymous e-mailer without a million dollar salary and a house in Journalist County.

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  6. That Bernie is Sexist, genius says

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/readers-on-sanders-2

    Bob should treat us to a second post in this series, based on a letter Josh posted as Part 2 in his letters about Sanders. It proves Bob's astute political prognostication when he ventured the notion that some of Hillary Clinton's supporters are her biggest problem. Well, maybe it wasn't real prognosticating on Bob's part. Just "educated guessing." But Bob was educated in the best of public schools plus Harvard. So his guess is actually better than yours or mine.

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