In the (probably apocryphal) words of Keynes:

> When someone persuades me that I am wrong, I change my mind. What do you do?

It's not a sign of vice either; I'm sure he's been believing that the Earth is round for 24+ years, and that's fine. What matters is accuracy, and updating in the face of new evidence, not consistency. Consistency in the face of new evidence is called faith.

Having the same opinion in and of itself is not a virtue, but having wisdom and foresight and conviction and true ground level initiative all at once is far more than just virtuous.

You speak of faith and belief a lot. Bernie is like a wise theological scholar. Personally I think he's wrong about quite a few things, but I recognize the strong morals and ethics, the personal virtue, the deep rational thought, the coherent inter relatedness behind his system. He's a personification of sometimes wise people are wrong, but they still remain wise. He's not for me personally, I like other folks, but I'm proud he's an American and if he were the leader I could respect him despite disagreement. And his female opponent is like a televangelist seeking ratings and pledge drives, a faith healer, a fake messiah. And people somehow wonder how she lost. Doesn't her show have the highest ratings? Doesn't she make the best promises in her sermons? Don't our holiest people fall all over themselves to celebrate and show off their own holiness in supporting her? How could a charlatan like her not win, indeed?

It is if they were good opinions the whole damn time. Being for marriage equality for 24 years is a virtue. Being for an improved social safety net for 24 years is a virtue. Being for universal healthcare for 24 years is a virtue.

By European standards, most of the European centre-right is fine with most of what Bernie supports...

And then we wake up to Trump.

EDIT - Even though I think Trump is an existential threat to the USA, so have many of our leaders. Maybe 'us' wouldn't be the US if we weren't just a bit crazy. I must accept that I might be wrong about Trump be universally bad and see what happens.

You are deliberately misinterpreting the statement. Of course having the same opinion for 24 years by itself is not a virtue! The point is: he has had the same public stance on things that matter : gay marriage, healthcare, etc. In today's climate, when politicians change their views based on the most recent polling, this is indeed a virtue.

How do you know that? Can you really not imagine that someone can misinterpret something without malicious intention?

Can you believe that I agree with OP that Bernie was the better candidate, yet still disagree about a particular argument?

"I believe in universal human rights" is a virtue that I think it is perfectly acceptable to have to 24 years (or more!)

That was not what GP was saying at all. He was saying that Bernie has always stood for what he believes is the right thing to do, whereas Hillary would pick a stance based on its political value.

“But If Everybody's Watching, You Know, All Of The Back Room Discussions And The Deals, You Know, Then People Get A Little Nervous, To Say The Least. So, You Need Both A Public And A Private Position.”

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/927

Her motives are clear.

Like, what if someone shows up and shows that Trump has had the same opinions all along? Is that a positive for him?

If the ideas are shitty, it doesn't matter how consistent or inconsistent they are. If they're good, I don't care if the person only adopted them 3 years ago, as long as they did for the right reasons, (e.g. not political expediency, I agree.)

I agree that the fact that he's held the same opinions for a long time is evidence that Berns doesn't act out of political expediency, but to me that point is far overshadowed by whether the ideas are any good.

>but to me that point is far overshadowed by whether the ideas are any good

Mind telling me where his ideas are bad? Most of his beliefs are both long held, progressive, and in my opinion, largely agreeable.

But being right for 24 years is.

She adopted his ideas one by one and then tried to pretend they'd been hers all along. Unfortunately (for her), Democrats aren't that gullible. It was clear that she was only saying what voters wanted to hear, while Bernie truly believed everything he'd been saying for that past 25+ years.

Case in point: https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/2631

All I'm saying is, you can't tout keeping the same idea for years as an unqualified good thing, you have to look at the idea and history in detail, and show that it was a good idea all along.

(I'm not objecting to the object-level argument that Clinton does whatever is politically expedient, I'm objecting to the line of argument that it's good for a politician to hold an opinion for a long time, without also showing that the idea is good, and that it was good all along.)

You're missing the point completely.

I'm not praising Sanders' stubbornness, I'm praising his foresight and vastly superior judgment. He knew what this country needed to do 20 years before Hillary, and he was willing to vehemently defend his opinions despite the overwhelming opposition. The fact that you're trying to turn this into some kind of debate about consistency vs. facts is frankly baffling. It's clear that he was right all along and she was late to the party on every issue that liberals and progressives care about.

And do you really believe she changed her opinion on those issues where she claimed to have "evolved"? I sure don't. We know she still wants TPP to pass, we know she still secretly supports DOMA, we know she had no interest in reigning in Wall Street, we know she (and Chelsea) were halfheartedly pretending to support medical marijuana, etc. etc.. The Hillary Clinton presented to the public was a fictional character designed for one purpose: To win the presidency.

It didn't work, and the reason is clear: We're not as ignorant or gullible as they'd hoped: https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/3599#efmARhAWn

You're right, I got sidetracked by this:

> has been saying the exact same things for years

I keep forgetting not to try debating what is or isn't a good argument, in the abstract, in politics threads.

What he said makes complete sense in the context he presented it in, and is valid.

You're arguing how what he said would be bad in an entirely different context, which is irrelevant.

If that's the critique you hear when comparing Sanders to Clinton, you're not listening very well.

To restate, Sanders didn't just tout the same idea. He's fought for the same core principles throughout his whole career, even when in the clear minority. Overtime, the rest of our culture came around to those ideas (bringing Clinton with it).

His virtue isn't his tenacity. It's his progressive thinking.

> the exact same thing

for years.

I'm not American, I havn't looked into Berns' history in details.

She has demonstrated over her career that she will vote for whatever is popular, lean on "think of the children" issues, and only vote progressively to catch up with the times. In a time where Congressional approval is so low, the American people couldn't stomach electing the epitome of a career politician who seems to have so many skeletons in her closet the door is about to burst (real or imaginary, the impression is there).

We ended up with Trump, which I am absolutely not thrilled about, but at least this will send the Democrats back to the drawing board to come up with something better than "Less Evil." I just pray to the FSM that the Republican House, Senate, Cabinet, and Supreme Court don't turn our great nation into a chop shop in the next 2 / 4 years. We are in for a bumpy ride.

Would you rather have an ethically malleable liberal than a principled conservative? In most cases I would rather have the principled politician because they will have some kind of goal to benefit some segment of Americans. Can we really say that any ethically malleable politician, of any flavor, will always help some segment of Americans?

Then as a counter to all this. Nixon did found the EPA.

I think malleable politicians are malleable because they try to benefit the largest section of the population that they can. Conservatives, lately, have focused on benefiting a very small segment of the population directly, expecting the benefits to trickle down.

However, the trickle down has not worked. I know very little about economics, but, I remember, headlines in newspapers eight years ago were mainly about unemployment, and the growth of the National debt. The euro was $1.30 (now it buoys around $1.10).

I think the American economy is much better now than it was eight years ago, and a larger section of the population has benefited from that, than when principled conservatives were in the government. (And this is just from an economic point of view, which is a small part of the benefits).

Basically, "the perfect is the enemy of the good" applied to politics.

e.g. "Don't ask, don't tell" is a crappy policy compared with letting gay people serve openly, but it's an improvement on the status quo at that time which was setting up sting operations to catch out gay servicemen and throw them out of the army.

I guess I'm condoning her fighting for something she doesn't truly believe is right, as long as it's better than what's currently the case. Does that make me bad? Does it make her bad?

Really, she hasn't achieved much good for the world if any. She is good at being a power person in Washington though.

I'm not pro Trump, by the way.

Then there's Cuba. Not a big deal in global terms, but a watershed in America's history. Although the payoffs for these mainly accrue to Kerry, it was Hilary who made them happen.

Benghazi was a political dog and pony show, that she is completely blameless of.

Libya and Gaddafi were a humanitarian disaster that rests squarely on her shoulders.

You don't have to qualify your statements anymore. The veil of illusion has come down and the sock puppet masters have ended their contracts, so you won't be attacked unfairly for pointing out the truth.

Basically, "the perfect is the enemy of the good" applied to politics.

A valid point, in spirit.

But the basic problem with the Clintonian philosophy (a term which was coined during Bill's tenure, actually) is that they both took "triangulation" to such an extreme (and made so many 180-degree flip-flops on basic issues, which really should have been principle gut calls -- Hillary's gay rights being a classic example) that the end, you could never get a fix on, let alone believe them what they stood for. It's like nailing jello to a wall, basically.

To be truly successful in politics -- the stance to take (which I hope this election proves) is not "triangulation at all costs" (a.k.a. Standard Clintonianism). Nor is it "perfection at all costs". But it does require a keen sense of judgement to know when, exactly, to make a proper gut call between the two -- and stand up for the right thing, and say the right thing. Even if it seems the majority is against you, or no one is listening to your speeches on C-PAN.

That, and a sense for not letting one's self be "played" (in the sense that Hillary appears to have genuinely believed both the Bush's administration line about the imminent threat of WMD in Iraq, and his private assurances -- albeit not encoded in the resolution that she tragically voted for -- that he wouldn't invade unless all diplomatic avenues had been exhausted; or in the sense that both of the Clintons allowed themselves to be played, for decades, by the Christian Right).

I disagree with, but respect, Sanders, Stein, Warren, Feingold (and some other lefties). Hillary equals revulsion, repulsion. I can't be talked from "respect" to "vote" with someone I can't even respect first.

The D party worked very hard on converting "respect" people to "vote" people. I think they achieved 100% success. The problem is most of the country can never respect her, and there was zero effort put into making her respectable (perhaps it was recognized as impossible?)

There's something fundamentally wrong internally with the D party when the ground seems to be crawling with respectable (possibly votable!) candidates but instead we get a movie caricature of Lex Luther combined with a slightly more chicken hawk bloodthirsty Joker from a sequel rejected in the 90s. There's something just horribly fundamentally wrong with how people gain political power inside the D party, resulting in the wrong leaders at the wrong times.

But to not put a polarizing, inexperienced politician like Trump away easily is what makes the commentators (and me) think there are larger trends at work.

She had all the cards.

Also, keep in mind that most of the electorate votes against party lines, even if the party were to nominate Satan. She completely failed the margins.

Hillary didn't need any help destroying her reputation.

As a matter of public record, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated in her FBI interview that she could not recall briefings at the State department pertaining to handling classified information, nor could she give an example of how information might be classified.

Now this is either a lie, or a self-admission that disqualifies a person to hold the position of commander-in-chief of the armed forces, privy to the most sensitive information in the government.

How can you fault a voter who observes these facts and casts their vote for someone else?

Or, to adapt from Donald Rumsfeld, you go into an election with the electorate you have, not the electorate you wish you had.

There could have been a vast conspiracy to frame the Unibomber or Al Capone or John Dillinger or Nixon. No one can explain why them. Therefore I think it infinitely more likely they were just crooks.

Because she has been in politics for for 30 something years, been on the national stage for 20 something years, and has been "the next president" for roughly 10 years. This wasn't one hit job, this was decades of concentrated work that eventually broke the camel's back.

How is "I'll do exactly what the establishment tells me to do, just like the last couple figureheads, except in a $10K Chairman Mao pantsuit" a challenge to much of anyone?

The country has a not so comfy history with black folks, yet men and women have lived together for eternity, so why didn't Obama get it perhaps 100 or 10000 times worse? Surely you're not a racism denialist? Perhaps no one accused Obama of being a criminal because... he isn't? I mean I never voted for him but I can respect him, he's a wise constitutional scholar who probably deserves a supreme court appointment to an empty liberal seat when this is all over. I disagree with him on many issues but he's no crook and he's reasonably wise. He got teased, essentially, about a technicality of being born in a foreign country and being muslim which frankly don't matter and never turned out to be a problem and never went past offending people on twitter.

Palin was hated in the mainstream media, but it was just a generic Quayle style two minutes hate. How come no one provided any evidence of her crimes? Perhaps... there were none? Could there possibly be any hatred hotter than the DNC controlled MSM's hatred toward Palin, yet there's nothing but sophistry against her because she's clean? I wouldn't describe Palin as being a bright bulb or a beacon of wisdom yet I voted for her, she's not that bad.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Public_Safety_Commissio...

I like your optimism, but do you remember what first brought our new president elect into the political sphere? It certainly wasn't to praise Obama for his clean and scandal free record.

I guess nobody around her who had an inkling dared to raise their hand. Can't even imagine what they'd say "Ma'am, people don't believe what you are saying, can you be more genuine a bit?"...

Check out of some of the leaked emails. I'm not sure if they said it to her directly, but they regularly remarked on how insincere and artificial she came across as.

She just has almost no charisma or jovial presence, unlike Trump.

This was this the exact same case with Ron Paul 4 years ago but it seemed to hardly matter

Ron Paul just kept repeating his position, regardless of how many puppy orphanages were on fire.

I am convinced that he did not possess the duplicity of most politicians.

She fought a near perfect 1970s campaign. She got every Columbia school of journalism grad eating out of her hand, total control and ally to the legacy main stream media. Newspapers. Radio. Every academic in the country shilling for her or they lose their position. She had nothing fundamentally new that a 60s radical wouldn't have recognized. There's simply no way she could have lost in 1976.

Of course its 2016 so Trump has approx 5 million NEETs on /POL/ shitposting insane memes about nazi frogs into every normies facebook feed on the planet while epic trolling social and legacy media and releasing all the proof of her corruption via email thru hacked servers on wikileaks. He was the only candidate talking about 2010s issues like the result of 1960s immigration reform or the marginalization and hatred of the white working class. He fought a pretty good 2016 campaign.

This being 2016 and not 1976 its no great surprise which strategy won.

The "R" side needs to take notes that the "D" are likely to make this mistake precisely once. The battles in 2020 and 2024 are not going to be baby boomers still stuck in the '70s losing to '10s millennials again.

Also she hates half the country and calls them deplorables. Somehow, oddly, her despising them didn't magically translate into votes. The sense of entitlement is strong with that one...

A lot of people who voted for her are Democrats -- people she thought she had already in her pockets.

Trump wasn't a top candidate, he wasn't the popular one, has said stupid stuff, and yet people disliked Hillary so much, they still voted for him.

I looked through some emails, it was entertaining (even though CNN said it is illegal to look through them and only media was special and had to interpret them for us). There was very little in those emails of "Hey how does this help ordinary people, let's do something for them" or "You know, we should just tell the truth, let's not really spin this at all".

It is all about how do fool this block "Women, ok, she is a woman, that's easy". Black voters, those are easy... what should we do for them? Organized a rap concert, of course. Because that's not condescending... Let's call Jay-z so he can drop a few N-bombs at them, I hear they like that. She is like the awkward rich person trying to find common ground with peasant that she usually would never associates with and it just looks so fake and stupid... and now more people can see that.

I'm sure if we had wikileaks of the RNC during that time, it would have revealed much of the same type of insider corruption.

Those knife fights over party rules (especially 40 (b)) made it possible for Trump to get into the running for the nomination, according to many GOP observers. See [1] for an explanation of how.

These election results are a political pressure relief valve: significant swathes of the electorate have been systematically excluded and ignored, then they tried to organize in different ways. First culminating in Ron Paul's bid, then a different wave in Bernie Sanders' bid, and enough formed coalitions behind Trump this time around to cost both parties' establishments their desired outcomes. Ignoring such large groups of the electorate for much longer would have cost us much more in the future. There are very big chunks of the population in a lot of pain for going on decades now, and effectively ignoring that is no longer much of an option going forward.

I see China possibly facing a similar issue with their rural population at some point in the far future.

[1] https://alibertarianfuture.com/2016-election/2016-republican...

I believe the Ron Paul rule was seen to block Ted Cruz rather than help Trump (semantics, I suppose).

This would allow for a lot of social services, but keep them more localized, so they can serve the population better and be held more accountable.

And it would avoid a lot of the problems with big government at the federal level.

Did it though? Did it? [1]

[1] https://youtu.be/zaD84DTGULo?t=29s

I mean, I know people have been redirecting Trump's flaws onto Hillary but this is just hilarious.

I'm a big fan of Bernie, but I'm not sure I want a politician with early 90s views of everything...

If you can't open it, it's an exchange between Gimli and Legolas from the LoTR movie.

Gimli (wearing Bernie hat): I never thought I'd be fighting side by side with a trumpster.

Legolas (with MAGA hat): What about side by side with a deplorable?

Gimli (wearing Bernie hat): Aye.

Gimli (wearing Hillary for Prison 2016 hat): I could do that.

Ordinarily if the choice is bad I'd vote third party, but I really didn't want Hillary in and I was pretty sure this wouldn't be the election when the third party wins it.