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| Google trends during and after the Democratic Debate. Click here for a larger version. |
My feed, curated no doubt by my likes and clicks and facebook's algorithms, features mostly young(ish) and early middle-aged folks. The broad sense from these folks is that they still love Bernie but feel an ever-stronger "inevitability" around Hillary. Both, they say, did a very good job in the debate. O'Malley (I still don't know him well enough to call him Martin, or Marty) came out as a surprisingly strong performer.
The above graph from US News and World Report shows google trends during and after the report, with Sanders standing out as a strong "winner".
What were your thoughts? Are there issues in particular that appeal to you as a Buddhist? What about the candidates? Or do you see yourself as more apolitical?
I find myself to be mostly apolitical in American politics. Bernie is hardly a democrat-he's far more "left-leaning" than any 'true democrat' I have ever seen or known.
ReplyDeleteAs a Buddhists there's far too many issues that are imperative now that must be deth with ASAP for me to trust any one man or woman's blabbering-who is Hillary going to have as her cabinet, how about Bernie and the others?
To put it in idealistic senses: we rarely give those like Bernie, a passion and a vision of such idealist nature that we pass them as such: hippies, idealists, liberals with no real vision, but we need to give those people a chance since everyone else seems to have muddied our world too much.
Those are my 2 cents.
Thanks for chipping in with those thoughts, Denis. Bernie certainly is to the left; but I'd wonder about trying too hard to define what a 'true democrat' is. From what I've seen, Webb steers pretty far to the right, but still manages to be a democrat, and I suppose by most people's definitions, Hillary is the centrist candidate.
DeleteI agree about the 'muddied world' point. So part of me is pretty excited by Bernie's clarity and vision. But I also talk with a lot of 'realists' who basically say, 'hey, we live in a muddied world, Hillary knows that world well, she's the best candidate.' I see some truth in that; but these people were saying much the same 8 years ago when Hillary led over Obama. We'll see...
I was very impressed by Hillary's debate performance. She is a cool, well-informed, very experienced person who has a guy named Bill around to provide advise. Like Denis, I am not swayed by Bernie's charms. And I think that someone who has tagged himself a 'socialist' for decades could not win in the general election. Indeed, Sanders' election prospects could be so bleak, we could find that, on Jan 20, 2017, the nutty Republicans could have majorities in both the House and Senate and someone named Donald or Ben in the White House. If that happens, we might as well just draw the blinds wait for the End of the World.
ReplyDeleteGood points, Tom. I made similar ones not long ago and one further-left friend suggested I was a fear-mongering centrist. I find myself wondering, is Bernie more like the 2004 Howard Dean, who energized the youth before ultimately burning out in his big "yehaw!" speech; or like Obama in 2008, whose charm and coolness and consistent message led him in a come-from-behind victory over Hillary.
DeleteI thought Bernie sounds just like Lieberman! A lying, you-know-what-kissing blow-hard yankee with the charisma of dead flesh.
ReplyDeleteI can't get Hillary out of my mind from that old video interview of her laughing and tweeting and celebrating and bragging about killing Khaddaffi as soon as she got tweet news and video of him being murdered in the street after one of our drones hit his convoy. Also right after winning the "lifetime achievement children advocacy award" we had that old audio leak out from her library from early 1980's interview bragging about getting a child-rapist free in 1975 when she knew he was absolutely guilty and said she would "never trust polygraph tests again". The child is now 54 years old and is a heroine addict prostitute on the streets and she blames Hillary for her hard life after cross-examining her at 12 years old falsely saying she was a very promiscuous and sexually deviant girl.... and winning!
If she does this knowingly on public interviews for radio and television thinking it is suitable..... imagine what she keeps private.
ReplyDelete"you mean actually wipe off the emails with my hand is that what you are talking about?" <<she speaks pure BS and obvious lies just like Bill.