Attacks that would have been used effectively on Sanders if he were the Democratic nominee

Seeing this thread http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=2664743
brings up the point yet again that Sanders could have beaten Trump.

I think we should remind ourselves what a Sanders nomination would look like in detail, specifically the typical Republican attacks that would have been leveled against him.

Never mind the nuance to these points, Republicans don't do nuance, and they have a lot of potent anti-liberal talking points refined over decades.

1) over and over, he wants to raise your taxes, even on the middle class

2) over and over, he will enact job killing regulations (Sanders environmental plans)

3) he wants to hobble Wall Street by breaking up banks

4) he wants to redistribute your wealth (wink wink)

5) he's a socialist

6) he's a communist, a marxist

7) he's an old hippie

8) he praised communist dictators

9) he's not Christian and maybe he's even a godless atheist

10) he's pro-abortion

11) he's weird, creepy (his old writings)

12) he's too old

13) he had a child out of wedlock

Now I need to say, I don't mind any of these things myself. I voted for him in the primary. I loved so much of what he said.

However under his plans, my taxes would go up a lot under his plans. I don't mind it, I'm willing to pay more, but I think a lot of people wouldn't. The people in the news media sure wouldn't. Corporate America would not like it.

These attacks would be devastating, in my opinion, for his run. It's just super important to realize how blunt and effective Republican attacks can be, if you don't remember them yourself.

Would Sanders have done better in the rust-belt states with independent voters? Maybe, maybe not. There's no guarantee that independent voters wouldn't be strongly turned off by these GOP talking points. He may well have done much worse than HRC.

Yes, his favorability ratings were high, and that would have helped him. But those ratings were mostly because people didn't know him and he hadn't been subjected to GOP attacks.

Could Sanders have beaten back these attacks with his well-known powerful rhetoric? I think yes, somewhat. But I don't think he could have been strong enough to beat back all the attacks, and there's little doubt that the Dem party would not defended a lot of these attacks very well, because of their typical caution and trepidation. Plus, since Sanders was not a Democrat for most of his life, he would not get the same backing by the party, and there would be a lot of distancing.

So I understand that a lot of people on the left think this election was the best chance they had in ages to get New Deal/socialist candidate elected, and they are still mad that Sanders didn't get the nomination. They think the nomination was stolen from him, despite the actual evidence against that.

But the fact is, he lost the primary, and it wasn't that close, and he would NOT have had an easy time in the general election, at all.

WikiLeaks founder: Obama admin trying to delegitimize' Trump

Source: The Hill

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says there's an "obvious" reason the Obama administration has focused on Russia's alleged role in Democratic hacks leading up to Donald Trump's electoral win.

“They’re trying to delegitimize the Trump administration as it goes into the White House,” Assange said during an interview with Fox News's Sean Hannity airing Tuesday night, according to a transcript of excerpts from the network. “They are trying to say that President-elect Trump is not a legitimate president," Assange said during the interview, which was conducted at the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he has been staying.

"Our publications had wide uptake by the American people, they’re all true,” Assange continued. “But that’s not the allegation that’s being presented by the Obama White House.”

Assange reiterated the group's denial that Russia was the source of the Democratic documents released over the summer. "Our source is not a state party, so the answer for our interactions is no,” he said.

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/312431-wikileaks-founder-obama-admin-trying-to-delegitimize-trump

Does anyone still trust Edward Snowden?

I don't think he's going to get an Obama pardon...

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fable-of-edward-snowden-1483143143

Mr. Snowden’s narrative also includes the assertion that he was neither debriefed by nor even met with any Russian government official after he arrived in Moscow. This part of the narrative runs counter to findings of U.S. intelligence. According to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence report, Mr. Snowden, since he arrived in Moscow, “has had, and continues to have, contact with Russian intelligence services.” This finding is consistent with Russian debriefing practices, as described by the ex-KGB officers with whom I spoke in Moscow

Mr. Snowden also publicly claimed in Moscow in December 2013 to have secrets in his head, including “access to every target, every active operation. Full lists of them.” Could Mr. Snowden’s Russian hosts ignore such an opportunity after Mr. Putin had authorized his exfiltration to Moscow? Mr. Snowden, with no exit options, was in the palm of their hands. Under such circumstances, as Mr. Klintsevich pointed out in his June NPR interview: “If there’s a possibility to get information, they [the Russian intelligence services] will get it.”

The transfer of state secrets from Mr. Snowden to Russia did not occur in a vacuum. The intelligence war did not end with the termination of the Cold War; it shifted to cyberspace. Even if Russia could not match the NSA’s state-of-the-art sensors, computers and productive partnerships with the cipher services of Britain, Israel, Germany and other allies, it could nullify the U.S. agency’s edge by obtaining its sources and methods from even a single contractor with access to Level 3 documents.

Russian intelligence uses a single umbrella term to cover anyone who delivers it secret intelligence. Whether a person acted out of idealistic motives, sold information for money or remained clueless of the role he or she played in the transfer of secrets—the provider of secret data is considered an “espionage source.” By any measure, it is a job description that fits Mr. Snowden.