Would Nancy destroy America to hold on t o her power?

@monte3 Rightist paranoia is a problem but I'm a flaming lefty and I despise Nancy Pelosi.

@BlueMetalChick why?
Never mind I see your response below.

@monte3 Because she's a corporate piece of shit who takes incredible amounts of big money and blocks populist proposals. And she's also a faker. She's always going on about how identity politics are the most important factor when choosing a candidate to vote for. Always vote for the racial minority, always vote for the religious minority, always vote for the woman, always vote for the young candidate, always vote for the LGBT candidate, always vote for the military veteran. And yet when Tulsi Gabbard ran for president, Pelosi haaaaaaated her day and night even though she's five out of six of Pelosi's criteria. She's young, female, ethnically Hawaiian, a practicing Hindu, and a veteran. But because she supports universal education and withdrawing from the Middle East and ending corporate welfare and ending big bank bailouts and ending quantitative easing and stopping support for the Saudis and the Yemeni genocide, all those "minority points" are rendered null and void.

Tulsi Gabbard is one of the strangest things I have seen in American politics. .08% support, at best, and yet fairly extreme supports from an unusual mix of people . I don’t know why she could not get any broad support or demonstrate anything near electability, but sometimes things just are.
In my opinion there is only one issue in this election and it is Trump, you have to be for hi or against him. @BlueMetalChick

@monte3 She is an anomaly, you are correct. I think it it was the result of her being incredibly young in the context of presidential candidates as well as being quite unknown, and overwhelmingly negative media coverage.

@BlueMetalChick yeah and she had no lane run in. The progressive or populist was Sanders and Warren and the moderate lane was Amy K and Pete B and Joe Biden. I think she failed to find a voter base and to express a coherent reason to vote for her.

@BlueMetalChick she deserved more coverage...I voted for her in the primary....anyone Hillary hates that bad was worthy of my vote

@BlueMetalChick Most of Tulsi’s support was from Republicans who liked her “fuck the DNC” attitude. Plus men who just liked how she looks in a bathing suit, the types who thought Sarah Palin was hot.

@LeopoldBloom In that case they were supporting her for the wrong reason. Her antiwar positions were the highlight of her campaign.

@BlueMetalChick It's not like she was the only antiwar candidate. Sanders was pretty vocal about his plans to reduce the US overseas military footprint, and most of the others also were to some degree. And if Tulsi's position was "let's disband the military," she was competing with Marianne Williamson who had a more coherent proposal for a new Department of Peace and also more credibility in that area, having been anti-war for her entire career instead of recently seeing the light as Tulsi supposedly has.

So Tulsi offered nothing other than looking nice in a bathing suit and general disgust with the other candidates, both of which appeal to conservative men.

@LeopoldBloom Fair point, with the exception of Buttigieg and Ryan, most candidates at least used antiwar rhetoric. That being said, Tulsi had a lot better grasp of the urgency of it, as well as the situation in Israel which even Sanders glossed over.

@BlueMetalChick I don't think anyone was paying attention to that, otherwise she would have done better than 1-2%, and most of that was crossover Republicans anyway.

I wouldn't trust Tulsi as far as I could throw her. I don't think she has a grasp of the situation in Israel at all, at least not historically. Not to mention, she was raised in a hysterically anti-LGBT cult that is an offshoot of the Hare Krishnas (too crazy for the Krishnas, that's saying something) and she's never disavowed it. For all we know, she's still under the control of the guy who runs the cult. But I look forward to her next gig as a Fox News commentator.

@LeopoldBloom This is true that her origins are strongly homophobic, and I had reservations about this myself but her voting record is as strongly pro-LGBT as anyone I've seen, so I don't see a reason to believe she would suddenly do a 180.

Compared to pretty much the entire rest of the American government save for Ro Khanna, she has a better understanding of Israel. A lot of people want to allow the illegal occupation of the West Bank to continue, or they support a two-state solution with open borders. Or even worse, a one-state solution. Tulsi's proposal, last she spoke of it, was basically a two-state solution with a big thick border and a shitload of security separating Israel from Palestine. Which is not as good of an idea as Khanna's separate state proposal, but it's probably the second best.

Tulsi as a Fox News commentator would be like Heinrich Himmler as a rabbi. How could someone who is antiwar, supports universal healthcare, infrastructure spending, universal education, drug reimportation, labor unions, opposes corporate subsidies and quantitative easing and campaign bundling, is pro-choice, pro-LGBT, and doesn't wanna bomb Syria possibly be welcomed on Fox News?

@BlueMetalChick A pro-LGBT voting record isn't enough. I would want her to strongly denounce the cult and unequivocally state that she is no longer connected to it. Same as Robert Byrd did regarding his former membership in the KKK. Byrd didn't just cast pro-civil rights votes; he denounced the KKK and apologized repeatedly for his youthful stupidity. Tulsi hasn't done anything even close to that. Granted, her cult isn't anywhere near as destructive as the KKK was.

The two-state solution is dead. Palestine would be a failed state from the start. The best proposal I've heard is President Rivlin's, of a federation with self-governing cantons, similar to Switzerland.

Tulsi is obviously a liberal, but what would make her attractive to Fox as a spokesperson for "the other side" (like Jeffrey Lord used to be on CNN) is her complaining about the other candidates and how the DNC is treating her. So that will go over well. And her appearance won't hurt.

@LeopoldBloom I'm technically LGBT being an asexual although that's an edgy thing to say because it's not like asexual people have faced the kind of discrimination that homosexuals have, but regardless. A pro-LGBT voting record satisfies me because I think about how I would act if it were me. There's a lot of people and groups of people that I really do hate, but I wouldn't ever want them to be persecuted for it. This is a frivolous example but I despise the Boston Bruins ice hockey team and all their fans, but if I were the president, I wouldn't pass laws that target Bruins fans even though I hate them. So my thinking is, even if Tulsi does secretly still harbor resentment for LGBT people as a result of her early life, if she's politicking in the best interests of LGBT then I really can't complain.

She does indeed talk a lot of shit about most of the rest of the democratic party. Unfortunately, most of it is true, and so I really can't take issue with her saying it. Although I suppose it is a fair point that a lot of rightists would like her simply for that fact. To be sure, many rightists would genuinely listen to her criticisms of the DNC and they'd understand and agree, but many more of them would simply like her because they support anyone who trashes dem dadgum leebrulz.

@monte3 Did you just have a birthday ?? ---

@BlueMetalChick OK, fair enough, but if Byrd hadn't condemned the KKK, one could question whether his pro-civil rights votes were just pandering. As it was, I have no doubt that he changed his mind and regretted his actions. With Tulsi, I assume she is smart enough to know that anti-LGBT doesn't fly in the Democratic party anymore.

Tulsi's talking shit about the rest of the Democrats came across as whining. It's not Tom Perez' fault that the voters didn't like her. You didn't hear Marianne Williamson or John Delaney or Mike Gravel kvetching the way she did.

@LeopoldBloom Oh Mike Gravel absolutely did, although Williamson and Delaney did not. I mean, I get what you mean, there's only so much that a person can say about their own party before you start to question whose team they're really on. But for example, what Tulsi said about Kamala was so true that is basically ended her entire campaign.

@BlueMetalChick Mike Gravel outsourced his campaign messaging to two high school kids, and only told them "don't say anything I wouldn't say." The guy is like 100, he didn't want to learn how to use Twitter at his age.

Everyone dismissed Williamson, but she has some great ideas, and it was amusing to watch the other candidates pick them up. Like the idea that health care has to encompass environmental concerns and things that are making people sick, not just treating them after they're already sick. Of course she's no more qualified for the presidency than Trump is, but maybe a cabinet post in the "Department of Peace" under President AOC?

I have to give Tulsi credit for knocking out Harris. Imagine what Trump would have done to her if she made it that far.

@LeopoldBloom Mike Gravel is not like 100, he's like 500 lol. No for real though, I loved how weird and confusing his campaign was, and yet how awesome so much of the stuff he said was. He's still kicking ass all this time later.

Williamson had some cool ideas but they were overshadowed by her cringy behavior. That being said, she actually deserved some more credit than she got. She was pretty out there with that thing about calling New Zealand on the phone or whatever but she had some real gems too.

@BlueMetalChick My wife has followed Williamson for years, the whole Course in Miracles thing, so I know a lot about her. I think her problem was not being ready for the national stage. It's not like she hasn't ever spoken in front of a crowd before, but debates are entirely different.

Gravel makes Bernie Sanders look like Ronald Reagan in comparison. He's one of the few American politicians who would be considered a left winger in most European countries, while Sanders would be a conservative, sort of to the right of Boris Johnson, only without the nationalism.

@LeopoldBloom Gravel is even more old school than Sanders is. He sharpened his blades by battling it out with Reagan and the cabinet pulling his puppet strings, so that makes a lot of sense. Sanders, when compared to the rest of the developed world, is a down-the-line moderate. Which is perfectly fine, but it's so silly to act like he's some kind of radical.

@BlueMetalChick I wish Sanders wouldn't call himself a socialist; it just confuses people who think anyone to the left of Rush Limbaugh is a communist.

@LeopoldBloom It's because political philosophers are terrible at naming things. Not that I can criticize; I'm an astronomer, and scientists are even worse at it. But Sanders got confused between [i]social democracy[/i] and [i]democratic socialism.[/i] They sound the same but are not. A democratic socialist supports post-capitalism and seeks to put the means of production entirely in the hands of the workers. A social democrat is, essentially, a progressive leftist, and supports a free market economy but with strong economic regulation and a well funded public sector to provide universal programs and utilities. Sanders is a social democrat, not a democratic socialist.

@BlueMetalChick I can see him debating Trump and spending ten minutes explaining that, and Trump responds with "all you need to know is he's a commie."