We are constantly lectured to believe that liberal candidates can't win votes.

How do we know it's a lie and a talking point, rather than the truth?

Simple.

Because Third Way corporate politicians routinely LIE their way through campaigns pretending to be more liberal than they actually are. They mouth empty promises about fighting for a public option or putting on comfortable walking shoes for unions or taking on criminal banks. They *always* pivot leftward in their rhetoric during campaigns in order to win votes, because they know that voters are significantly to the left of the predatory corporate agenda they actually stand for.

Thus, we get the spectacle of Hillary now claiming to care about income inequality, even though she is intimately connected with, overwhelmingly backed and funded by, the predator class that drives obscene inequality in this nation. Claiming to care even while she supports H1B visas that destroy the jobs of Americans. Claiming to give a damn even though she is an author of perhaps the most predatory, antidemocratic "free trade" agreement in this nation's history, that will destroy American jobs, force Americans to compete with Third World workers, and cut the wages of fully NINETY PERCENT of working Americans:

Hillary pushes for increases in H1B visas and outsourcing.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6405669

Hillary Clinton's leading role in drafting the TPP
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101667554

Hillary's TPP will mean a pay cut for 90 percent of American workers.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023661805

Hillary Clinton and Trade Deals: That “Giant Sucking Sound”
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016101761

And thus we get the insulting theater of Hillary now claiming to want to end mass incarceration in this nation, when her entire history and "co-presidency" relentlessly escalated imprisonment of Americans in this country:

The Clinton Dynasty's Horrific Legacy: More Drug War, More Prisons
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/clinton-dynasty-horrific-legacy-more-drug-war-more-prisons

Corporate politicians lie and manipulate. The corporate MO by definition is to manipulate and advertise to win power and profit, not to represent anybody else. But this nation is SICK of government with a profit motive. We are SICK of the lies and the manipulation and the utter contempt we are shown by those who pretend to represent us.

Corporatists have poured untold dollars into narrowing the debate and propagandizing the public into believing that corporate "solutions" are the only possible solutions. Bernie threatens to shatter all that and speak the truth to the nation: that our system is deeply corrupt, and that vicious predatory corporate policies have been a CHOICE all along.


OUTSTANDING OP, MANNY. TO THE GREATEST PAGE, BECAUSE ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.

What an absurd OP.

I call this familiar Third Way tactic the attempt to turn elections from civic exercise into vapid social event. To pretend that merely being a "Democrat" makes all candidates alike regardless of their actual record. To detach party loyalty from actual policies and to insist on absurd rules about not criticizing their records, as though they were guests at a party rather than politicians applying for jobs as our representatives.

Just as our political discourse on TV has been perverted into personality gossip rather than a discussion of issues to find the candidate who best represents the interests of the people, we are now lectured on DU that it's not nice to say anything negative about a candidate....as though we were at a cocktail party or a social gathering rather than vetting applicants for a job that will exert power over the lives of millions of human beings.

We have a grave, systemic problem in this country. It is problem of filthy corporate money buying our elections and our political candidates. Hillary Clinton is the poster candidate for this problem. She is intimately tied to Goldman-Sachs and Wall Street, and her record promises more of the corporate looting and dismantling of democracy that have hollowed out the middle class in this nation and turned us from representative democratic nation into an authoritarian oligarchy with secret laws, secret courts, mass surveillance, militarized police, crushing of whistleblowing and dissent, endless war for profit, and systematic exploitation of the 99 percent for the profit of the One Percent.

This suggestion that calling out a predatory corporate record is "bashing," or that saying something negative about a candidate's record is somehow unseemly, as though we were at a social gathering where if you can't say something nice, you shouldn't say anything at all....This is a Third Way tactic to change the rules of politics. To silence strong, well-founded opposition to candidates whose associations and policies are malignant to ordinary Americans.

Hillary's record is that of a Third Way, corporate-purchased politician. It promises more looting and exploitation of the 99 percent, more bloody warmongering for profit, and more defense of an increasingly authoritarian, undemocratic police and surveillance state, where whistleblowers are not safe.

It is the civic duty of American citizens to speak honestly about the monied corruption in our system and to advocate against purchased candidates and for actual representatives of the people. We can't afford four more years of corporate predation.

+10000 A corporate police state has been constructed around us,

aggressively enabled by corporate politicians in both parties.

Republican House passes, and Obama endorses, expansion of surveillance (PCNA)

Remember when we fought off CISPA? Well, they're at it again, and this new bill is an even greater expansion of mass surveillance than before, as well as an assault on the ability of investigative journalists to do their job. In the words of one of the 55 civil liberties groups now expressing outrage, this bill "is little more than a backdoor for general purpose surveillance.”

Worse, the White House is publicly endorsing it.

Even worse, the PCNA is soon to be followed by another assault on privacy, The Cyber Information Sharing Act (CISA).

Civil liberties groups are trying to amass pressure for a presidential veto. Write, call, visit, and demand that this assault be stopped:

http://act.freepress.net/sign/internet_surveillance_cisa_obama/?t=4&akid=5193.9747712.Mo81SW

Another Twilight Zone denial from the "deny Hillary's entire record" corporate posting crew.

Notice that the posts about her corporate record extensively reference her actual behavior and record, whereas the denials always take some absurd form of 'Yeah, she worked on the TPP and praised it in speeches, but you can't prove she really meant it!'

This is the degree to which we are treated like absolute blithering idiots, incapable of drawing conclusions from a candidate's lengthy record of policy and associations.

And this is the Orwellian nonsense that passes for advocacy for a corporate candidate these days: Not laying out an impressive record of working for the 99 percent and opposing predatory policies like the TPP and bank bailouts and H1B visas and wars for profit and the surveillance state....but a record of working FOR these things, paired with a belligerent challenge that you can't *prove* she will continue to do all the horrible things her record and associations suggest she will.

It's Twilight Zone level propaganda, beyond insulting to anyone who follows the issues and understands the duty of a candidate to appeal to voters with a record. Hillary has been clear on all the issues detailed in my links, and she has chosen AGAINST the 99 percent on all of them. More importantly, these aren't minor issues. These are serious, serious issues at the heart of the corporate coup of democracy being perpetrated on this nation.

[font color=red]Reject Third Way propaganda. Reject denial and rewriting of history.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5767160

[/font color]

We have much more in common with other 99 percenters than we have with the corporate One Percent.

It is corporate MO to divide, as this OP does. Build hatred between groups. But the truth is that we have much more in common with each other than we do with the corporate thieves who are looting and oppressing us all.

Below is the very best post I have read on DU in a while. It is by DUer, F4lconF16, and it exposes the MO of the corporate propaganda machine exactly:

On the contrary: there is a ton of money in that.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6458575

They care about racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry very much. You said as much yourself.

"And by having these serious differences they know they can keep us fighting between left and right while they get what they want on things that do matter to them"

It has been a tactic of the American elite since its very beginning. Our political and economic system is uniquely designed to fracture the working class, to keep us from uniting. It's why laws were passed in the early 1800s forbidding interracial communications--the poor Irish and the slaves were beginning to cause worry. It's why whites and blacks have had their hatreds stoked by their literal and financial masters against one another for the last 200 years. It's why gay marriage isn't legal everywhere yet, despite a majority of people supporting it. It's why women are still discriminated against (though there is a far, far longer history to that than just our political system, and indeed, political systems at all). Our entire political history has been carefully balanced oppression stacked on top of and woven into more carefully balanced oppression. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. So far it's worked more than it hasn't.

[font size=3]It is absolutely critical to keep us divided amongst ourselves. The elite care more about those issues than you might think, because without them, the people will realize their own power as one. They will become a single working class, rather than blacks and whites, men and women, straight and gay. We are a dangerous mass of humanity that would roll over them like the ocean rolls over a few pebbles.[/font size]

This is why these social issues are just as important as the economic ones, the power struggles. They are utterly critical to maintaining the illusion that there is no true working class, that we are separate, different from one another. The elite care very much about maintaining that illusion.

Enough division. Enough hatred. Enough propaganda.

Red versus Blue is a scam, a tactic to keep us divided and unable to fight back. We are the 99 percent, and we are ALL the victims of the stunningly united corporate government that now rules and exploits us:

Mass spying on Americans? Both parties support it.
Trans-Pacific Job/Wage Killing Secret Agreement? Both parties support it.
TISA corporate overlord agreement? Both parties support it.
Drilling and fracking? Both parties support it.
Wars on medical marijuana instead of corrupt banks? Both parties support it.
Deregulation of the food industry? Both parties support it.
GMO's? Both parties support it.
Mass propaganda aimed at Americans? Both parties support it.
Austerity for the masses? Both parties support it.
Cutting social safety nets? Both parties support it.
Corporatists in the cabinet? Both parties support it.
Bank bailouts? Both parties support it.
Ignoring the trillions stashed overseas? Both parties support it.
Tolling our interstate highways? Both parties support it.
Corporate education policy? Both parties support it. Privatization of the TVA? Both parties support it.
Immunity for telecoms? Both parties support it.
"Looking forward" and letting war criminals off the hook? Both parties support it.
Deciding torturers are patriots? Both parties support it.
Militarized police and assaults on protesters? Both parties support it.
Indefinite detention? Both parties support it.
Drone wars and kill lists? Both parties support it.
Targeting of journalists and whistleblowers? Both parties support it.
Private prisons replacing public prisons? Both parties support it.
Unions? Both parties view them with contempt.
Trillion dollar increase in nuclear weapons. Both parties support it.
New war in Iraq. Both parties support it.
New war in Syria. Both parties support it.
Carpet bombing of captive population in Gaza. Both parties support it.
Selling off swaths of the Gulf of Mexico for drilling? Both parties support it.
Drilling along the Atlantic Coast? Both parties support it.
Arctic drilling for Shell Oil? Both parties support it.

Done here. Seeking out OP's that focus on uniting to solve problems rather than using words like "insurgency" to foment hatred, suspicion, and division among Americans who share this nation and its future.

Reject Third Way propaganda. Reject the Two Minutes Hate and incessant attempts to divide.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5767160

K&R Guaranteed living income time.