I do not understand how being a “team player” -and I am being verbatim here- could be considered more important to her than having actual policies to the benefit of the middle class and the poor. After all, these are real people that we are talking about. Then to the detriment of reasoning, in some particular parts of the interview, it appeared she was willing to abandon rationality all at once and rely heavily on her best guesses and “gut feelings”. She did not struck me as a well-informed and unbiased intellectual I am afraid.
She did write a book called Troll Nation. It’s not about why we should be for democratsand what can be done… but why we need to make sure ‘those’ people don’t get their way.. because they want to make liberal cry. She’s literally implying tribalism while ignoring how someone like Bernie Sander represent that tribe… better than the tribe itself.
for me.. when she mention Bernie isn’t a democrat.. I guess she doesn’t know the democrats been trying to undermine Bernie since he ran and even to this day.
This was an interesting and cool conversation. We on the left have to stop letting our enemies divide us. It’s not fair to just dismiss someone like this, when there are tons of people in my daily life who have her opinions. In fact, it’s only on the Bernie issue that to me she suddenly seemed so strident and extreme.
You can sense the work indoctrination against Sanders has done on her. Her whole reaction to him was to see his policies in terms of agenda and pushing peoples’ buttons. If anything, Sanders was not a master of that button-pushing at all, and was only popular because he advocated popular issues long suppressed by popular assumptions about socialism.
The most important and revealing exchange occurs when Cenk is questioning her at 25:15, stating he doesn’t want to support some Democrats because they are corrupt and only work for their donors. “So I don’t wanna help those guys.” Amanda’s response at 25:38 is, “I’m glad to see vigorous primaries, and that’s, I feel, the mechanism to deal with that particular problem.”
What Amanda is completely oblivious about is the widely-shared perspective that Hilary Clinton was corrupt. Bernie engaged her in a “vigorous primary” exactly because that’s “the mechanism to deal with that particular problem.”
I see nothing wrong with anything this woman said. She certainly didn’t seem like the “Anti-Bernie Hellspawn” or whatever people made her out to be. She seems smart enough and committed, and we’re lucky to have her on “our” side. And thank you to Cenk for doing the interview.
This was painful to listen to. The same tired old arguments against Sanders that have been debunked over and over.
Tell me again how Bernie wasn’t attacked by the media. How they didn’t bring up his three houses and Jane’s “scandal” with Burlington college, how nobody called him a socialist. Everyone called him a socialist, we’ve just gotten to the point as a country that that’s not a scary bad word, at least among young people. And Bernie, when called a socialist, embraced it, he didn’t back down, that was the whole appeal. The Clinton machine did their best digging on him, and the best they could manage was that he bought a third house. Bernie would have won, because you can’t properly run a negative campaign against someone who’s been doing the right things his whole life.
As for the “he’s not a democrat, he wouldn’t help the other candidates,” did she miss the part where he campaigned for Clinton after the primary? Where he went on tour with Tom Perez to try to make the democrats look better? And then after that, the democrats provided no actual returns for the favor, and all Bernie wanted in return was more progressive policies.
And if she’s more left than Sanders on the issue of health care, then tell me, who in the world will you support? Who in government is proposing health care bills farther left than Bernie? And so if you want more than single payer, then how is Obamacare a better alternative here? Wouldn’t it be better to move to the left, even if not all the way, than to continue with a gutted version of Mitt Romney’s health care plan?
Bottom line is this. Bernie’s the most popular politician in the country, so there’s no argument to make against him on politics, and policy-wise, he’s as far left as we’ve got. If you really think we should have someone more progressive than Bernie, then run them in the primaries, but if he’s the most progressive person running in the race, then you can’t really say he’s not progressive enough as a reason not to support him.
I would say Bernie is the most popular politician in the World and not just the USA. I am Canadian and I would gladly have Bernie be our PM. I think Canada currently has a great PM with JT but he ran far to the left and then went towards the center when he won, just like Obama. In Canada the US Democratic Party is closer to our right wing Conservative party than any of our Left Wing Parties NDP, Green and Liberal.
Another telling, typically uninspiring, of the “Have you seen the other guys?” argument that establishment dems are pushing. Neoliberals cannot win the argument against Leftists, so they want a bunch of credit for attacking racist and sexist Republicans. Don’t fall for the distraction. The neoliberal policies of these identity peddlers are harmful for the groups they claim to defend.
I was somewhat surprised at the weakness of her arguments. Establishment types tout her as one of their sharpest minds. No evidence of that here. Ironically, it seems that Marcotte is merely a loud internet troll. Take her out of her echo-chamber, ask her to give an intellectual defense of her positions, and she fails miserably.
My experience with Republicans is that they know they’re voting against their economic self-interest but they don’t care. Their top priority isn’t exactly “sticking it to liberals”. What they care about more than anything is hurting black people (and other non-whites). They don’t care how much damage Republicans do to their lives as long as more damage is done to black people. I’ve had two Republicans flat out admit that to me. They’re single issue voters and their single issue is to screw black people.
Found the interview to be interesting. It seems like people think economic populism a la Bernie is in some way antithetical to the idea of identity polotics, but Bernie proves that they can coexist.
I agreed with alot that Amanda had to say but dont understand the dislike of Bernie.
One thing I hate about Democrats is that they are so willing to identifies the right-wings’ identity politics but can’t see past their own nose when they do it.
She talks a good talk about progressive movements but yet doesn’t support them and Correct me if I’m wrong but Bernie wanted Medicare E (everyone) and had to step that back to single payer when Obama started to talk about in 2008.
Wow, this was a strangely civil interview. She talks about how we’re supposed to be arguing the issues, when she was one of the clinton supporters that called all Sanders supporters sexist (including specifically Cenk).
She is one of the trolls she speaks of in troll nation. I’m surprised sexism was not even mentioned during the interview.
Her answers were weirdly cagey, but maybe I was just expecting more of a fight. Certainly everything she said about policy and Sanders set off my bullshit alarm.
Like are we supposed to believe she thought Clinton would bring the NHS to healthcare or that Clinton really caree about the health of the party over herself? Or that Elizabeth Warren isn’t “narrow” in her focus on issues? This is ridiculous and no one believes that. So of course she gave predictably bad reasons to not like Sanders.
I don’t get it. I always pictured her as such a firebrand, but here she seemed oddly subdued. And I feel like Cenk was trying to get more out of her too.
I guess all the kool-aid put out the fire or something.
I 100% agree with what you said here. Her answer on healthcare was so ridiculously disingenuous. She favored Hillary Clinton because Medicare for All is too conservative, and somehow Hillary–who said single payer would “never, ever happen”–would have brought us actual socialized medicine? That’s such a lie.
No one attacked Bernie during the primaries, really? Did you even watch the debates? Or notice Hillary’s giant entourage of surrogates constantly trashing him in the media so she could “keep her powder dry”?
Yes, I was surprised that Cenk didn’t call her out on that, but overall thought he did a great job in the interview. There is only so much time, and not everything can be address. I think it was also important to Cenk to acknowledge common ground.
Cenk gets a F for not calling out her BS. Why?! She pulls out trope after trope like saying that Hillary didn’t go negative?! Are you fine kidding me? I guess her opinion is that she didn’t cheat either. I expected her to say garbage but really, no push back?
I was less surprised by that and more surprised that they didn’t talk about sexism and the Bernie Bro slur. For those that don’t know Marcotte, she smeared Sanders and his supporters as sexists and misogynists during the campaign. Over and over again. She even specifically called out Cenk on twitter for being “sexist.”
Within that context, Cenk could have called her out on *something*. He didn’t call her out at all, and let her get away with obvious rhetorical bullshitting.
They found common ground, but they never clarified their actual differences.
Yeah, do you know who really wasn’t concerned about electing democrats down ballot?? —Hillary Clinton. She was asked repeatedly to stop singling out Trump as something radically different than the other standard Republicans who she was praising. Instead of working to energize the Left to turn out to vote, she was mostly concerned with flipping “mainstream republicans” to vote for HER. And she had no problem funneling as much money out of state parties to amass a gazillion dollars for her own campaign. She provided no coattails for other democratic candidates.
Yes, 100%. Clinton siphoned money away from local campaigns, crippling the Dems, while simultaneously pandering to the soft right, which pushed away whatever support she had left on the left. Woefully out of touch with the majority of Americans; much like Amanda Marcotte. It’s a shame really because Amanda is very talented but seems to have difficulty putting herself in other peoples shoes… let me rephrase that: she consciously refuses to put herself in other peoples shoes. She often has good points to make but it’s easily lost in her unwarranted and factually incorrect criticism of those with whom she disagrees with.
I would rather see Senate Leader Elizabeth Warren more than have her go into the cabinet. I think she can get both establishment votes (because she can raise money) and progressive votes because she is fairly progressive.
I rather have an uncharismatic wonky progressive go into the cabinet than have someone who can win her seat easily leave congress.
Amanda Marcotte–color me unimpressed. She’s an establishment hack–imo. She rings with sour, naive white privilege. I guess it’d be impossible to expect even 25% of media to have much breadth or depth. People rarely wander past stupid–and that includes professionals. Rah rha rahing a political party at the expense of policy, is as shallow as shallow can be. On the other hand, she does sound like a crazed Hillbot that’s had to eat a lot of her own shit, since the election, and, therefore, has turned around quite a bit–but she’s still trying to save at least some of her politically, self-bludgeoned face.
O.K., this is anecdotal. I live in a very rural and very “red” part of Minnesota — my town has <300 residents, surrounded by farms. I've lived here now for 17 years, but I grew up and lived over 45 years in the Chicago area.
I have discovered/talked with 2 men (1 townie and 1 farmer) since the election who said they supported Bernie Sanders and went on to vote for Trump.
Seems insane to a critical thinker because Sanders and Trump are total opposites, but "drahnfly" is correct about Trump co-opting Sanders populist economic message… plus I assume some degree of racism and misogyny.
Amanda Marcotte needs to get out of the wealthier cities/suburbs and into the hinterland if she wants to understand more than the establishment Democratic line.
Wow, she’s the ultimate “I do whatever the party asks me to, and I live for the party” zombie. Fanatic until the end, screw everything else. People, not issues is her motto.
She definitely has some strong beltway bias, but overall I thought this interview was very productive. She’s 100% wrong on Bernie for sure, but has some great insights about why people voted for trump.
She’s pretty decent on assessing the right. Seems progressive on healthcare, economics, justice, et al. Yet boy oh boy, she falls way short on money in politics + party loyalty.
Still, a worthy conversation. And we can walk away as friends.
Disagree vehemently with Marcotte’s reasoning on Bernie compared to Trump. She comments solely on the tone of each campaign. Yes, the two were light years apart. What she doesn’t see is that Trump’s rhetoric shifted as soon as Bernie was eliminated from the race. He won, in huge part, by co-opting Bernie’s populist economic message and tailoring it to his low information xenophobic base.
Agree with brinknguyen. Out of touch. Marcotte does herself no favors in this interview. She seems to have little more than a surface knowledge of issues.
This lady is so incredibly out of touch, just like a Clintonite. If I want to hear more garbage like identity politics, I’ll watch CNN and sip on the kool-aid.
Comments
I normally love Cenk in these interviews, but he let her off the hook on a lot of bullshit and contradictory claims here.
I do not understand how being a “team player” -and I am being verbatim here- could be considered more important to her than having actual policies to the benefit of the middle class and the poor. After all, these are real people that we are talking about. Then to the detriment of reasoning, in some particular parts of the interview, it appeared she was willing to abandon rationality all at once and rely heavily on her best guesses and “gut feelings”. She did not struck me as a well-informed and unbiased intellectual I am afraid.
She did write a book called Troll Nation. It’s not about why we should be for democratsand what can be done… but why we need to make sure ‘those’ people don’t get their way.. because they want to make liberal cry. She’s literally implying tribalism while ignoring how someone like Bernie Sander represent that tribe… better than the tribe itself.
for me.. when she mention Bernie isn’t a democrat.. I guess she doesn’t know the democrats been trying to undermine Bernie since he ran and even to this day.
She was garbage. Typical Hill Shill.
This was an interesting and cool conversation. We on the left have to stop letting our enemies divide us. It’s not fair to just dismiss someone like this, when there are tons of people in my daily life who have her opinions. In fact, it’s only on the Bernie issue that to me she suddenly seemed so strident and extreme.
You can sense the work indoctrination against Sanders has done on her. Her whole reaction to him was to see his policies in terms of agenda and pushing peoples’ buttons. If anything, Sanders was not a master of that button-pushing at all, and was only popular because he advocated popular issues long suppressed by popular assumptions about socialism.
The most important and revealing exchange occurs when Cenk is questioning her at 25:15, stating he doesn’t want to support some Democrats because they are corrupt and only work for their donors. “So I don’t wanna help those guys.” Amanda’s response at 25:38 is, “I’m glad to see vigorous primaries, and that’s, I feel, the mechanism to deal with that particular problem.”
What Amanda is completely oblivious about is the widely-shared perspective that Hilary Clinton was corrupt. Bernie engaged her in a “vigorous primary” exactly because that’s “the mechanism to deal with that particular problem.”
I see nothing wrong with anything this woman said. She certainly didn’t seem like the “Anti-Bernie Hellspawn” or whatever people made her out to be. She seems smart enough and committed, and we’re lucky to have her on “our” side. And thank you to Cenk for doing the interview.
This was painful to listen to. The same tired old arguments against Sanders that have been debunked over and over.
Tell me again how Bernie wasn’t attacked by the media. How they didn’t bring up his three houses and Jane’s “scandal” with Burlington college, how nobody called him a socialist. Everyone called him a socialist, we’ve just gotten to the point as a country that that’s not a scary bad word, at least among young people. And Bernie, when called a socialist, embraced it, he didn’t back down, that was the whole appeal. The Clinton machine did their best digging on him, and the best they could manage was that he bought a third house. Bernie would have won, because you can’t properly run a negative campaign against someone who’s been doing the right things his whole life.
As for the “he’s not a democrat, he wouldn’t help the other candidates,” did she miss the part where he campaigned for Clinton after the primary? Where he went on tour with Tom Perez to try to make the democrats look better? And then after that, the democrats provided no actual returns for the favor, and all Bernie wanted in return was more progressive policies.
And if she’s more left than Sanders on the issue of health care, then tell me, who in the world will you support? Who in government is proposing health care bills farther left than Bernie? And so if you want more than single payer, then how is Obamacare a better alternative here? Wouldn’t it be better to move to the left, even if not all the way, than to continue with a gutted version of Mitt Romney’s health care plan?
Bottom line is this. Bernie’s the most popular politician in the country, so there’s no argument to make against him on politics, and policy-wise, he’s as far left as we’ve got. If you really think we should have someone more progressive than Bernie, then run them in the primaries, but if he’s the most progressive person running in the race, then you can’t really say he’s not progressive enough as a reason not to support him.
I would say Bernie is the most popular politician in the World and not just the USA. I am Canadian and I would gladly have Bernie be our PM. I think Canada currently has a great PM with JT but he ran far to the left and then went towards the center when he won, just like Obama. In Canada the US Democratic Party is closer to our right wing Conservative party than any of our Left Wing Parties NDP, Green and Liberal.
AGREED!
This woman’s arguments were just as horrible as the way she described The Right Wing’s arguments!
She is awful and so was that interview!
Another telling, typically uninspiring, of the “Have you seen the other guys?” argument that establishment dems are pushing. Neoliberals cannot win the argument against Leftists, so they want a bunch of credit for attacking racist and sexist Republicans. Don’t fall for the distraction. The neoliberal policies of these identity peddlers are harmful for the groups they claim to defend.
I was somewhat surprised at the weakness of her arguments. Establishment types tout her as one of their sharpest minds. No evidence of that here. Ironically, it seems that Marcotte is merely a loud internet troll. Take her out of her echo-chamber, ask her to give an intellectual defense of her positions, and she fails miserably.
My experience with Republicans is that they know they’re voting against their economic self-interest but they don’t care. Their top priority isn’t exactly “sticking it to liberals”. What they care about more than anything is hurting black people (and other non-whites). They don’t care how much damage Republicans do to their lives as long as more damage is done to black people. I’ve had two Republicans flat out admit that to me. They’re single issue voters and their single issue is to screw black people.
Found the interview to be interesting. It seems like people think economic populism a la Bernie is in some way antithetical to the idea of identity polotics, but Bernie proves that they can coexist.
I agreed with alot that Amanda had to say but dont understand the dislike of Bernie.
Sanders / Warren anyone?
One thing I hate about Democrats is that they are so willing to identifies the right-wings’ identity politics but can’t see past their own nose when they do it.
She talks a good talk about progressive movements but yet doesn’t support them and Correct me if I’m wrong but Bernie wanted Medicare E (everyone) and had to step that back to single payer when Obama started to talk about in 2008.
Wow, this was a strangely civil interview. She talks about how we’re supposed to be arguing the issues, when she was one of the clinton supporters that called all Sanders supporters sexist (including specifically Cenk).
She is one of the trolls she speaks of in troll nation. I’m surprised sexism was not even mentioned during the interview.
Her answers were weirdly cagey, but maybe I was just expecting more of a fight. Certainly everything she said about policy and Sanders set off my bullshit alarm.
Like are we supposed to believe she thought Clinton would bring the NHS to healthcare or that Clinton really caree about the health of the party over herself? Or that Elizabeth Warren isn’t “narrow” in her focus on issues? This is ridiculous and no one believes that. So of course she gave predictably bad reasons to not like Sanders.
I don’t get it. I always pictured her as such a firebrand, but here she seemed oddly subdued. And I feel like Cenk was trying to get more out of her too.
I guess all the kool-aid put out the fire or something.
I 100% agree with what you said here. Her answer on healthcare was so ridiculously disingenuous. She favored Hillary Clinton because Medicare for All is too conservative, and somehow Hillary–who said single payer would “never, ever happen”–would have brought us actual socialized medicine? That’s such a lie.
No one attacked Bernie during the primaries, really? Did you even watch the debates? Or notice Hillary’s giant entourage of surrogates constantly trashing him in the media so she could “keep her powder dry”?
Yes, I was surprised that Cenk didn’t call her out on that, but overall thought he did a great job in the interview. There is only so much time, and not everything can be address. I think it was also important to Cenk to acknowledge common ground.
Cenk gets a F for not calling out her BS. Why?! She pulls out trope after trope like saying that Hillary didn’t go negative?! Are you fine kidding me? I guess her opinion is that she didn’t cheat either. I expected her to say garbage but really, no push back?
I was less surprised by that and more surprised that they didn’t talk about sexism and the Bernie Bro slur. For those that don’t know Marcotte, she smeared Sanders and his supporters as sexists and misogynists during the campaign. Over and over again. She even specifically called out Cenk on twitter for being “sexist.”
Within that context, Cenk could have called her out on *something*. He didn’t call her out at all, and let her get away with obvious rhetorical bullshitting.
They found common ground, but they never clarified their actual differences.
Yeah, do you know who really wasn’t concerned about electing democrats down ballot?? —Hillary Clinton. She was asked repeatedly to stop singling out Trump as something radically different than the other standard Republicans who she was praising. Instead of working to energize the Left to turn out to vote, she was mostly concerned with flipping “mainstream republicans” to vote for HER. And she had no problem funneling as much money out of state parties to amass a gazillion dollars for her own campaign. She provided no coattails for other democratic candidates.
Yes, 100%. Clinton siphoned money away from local campaigns, crippling the Dems, while simultaneously pandering to the soft right, which pushed away whatever support she had left on the left. Woefully out of touch with the majority of Americans; much like Amanda Marcotte. It’s a shame really because Amanda is very talented but seems to have difficulty putting herself in other peoples shoes… let me rephrase that: she consciously refuses to put herself in other peoples shoes. She often has good points to make but it’s easily lost in her unwarranted and factually incorrect criticism of those with whom she disagrees with.
I would rather see Senate Leader Elizabeth Warren more than have her go into the cabinet. I think she can get both establishment votes (because she can raise money) and progressive votes because she is fairly progressive.
I rather have an uncharismatic wonky progressive go into the cabinet than have someone who can win her seat easily leave congress.
Yea, we need her to keep that Senate seat blue.
Amanda Marcotte–color me unimpressed. She’s an establishment hack–imo. She rings with sour, naive white privilege. I guess it’d be impossible to expect even 25% of media to have much breadth or depth. People rarely wander past stupid–and that includes professionals. Rah rha rahing a political party at the expense of policy, is as shallow as shallow can be. On the other hand, she does sound like a crazed Hillbot that’s had to eat a lot of her own shit, since the election, and, therefore, has turned around quite a bit–but she’s still trying to save at least some of her politically, self-bludgeoned face.
O.K., this is anecdotal. I live in a very rural and very “red” part of Minnesota — my town has <300 residents, surrounded by farms. I've lived here now for 17 years, but I grew up and lived over 45 years in the Chicago area.
I have discovered/talked with 2 men (1 townie and 1 farmer) since the election who said they supported Bernie Sanders and went on to vote for Trump.
Seems insane to a critical thinker because Sanders and Trump are total opposites, but "drahnfly" is correct about Trump co-opting Sanders populist economic message… plus I assume some degree of racism and misogyny.
Amanda Marcotte needs to get out of the wealthier cities/suburbs and into the hinterland if she wants to understand more than the establishment Democratic line.
Wow, she’s the ultimate “I do whatever the party asks me to, and I live for the party” zombie. Fanatic until the end, screw everything else. People, not issues is her motto.
She definitely has some strong beltway bias, but overall I thought this interview was very productive. She’s 100% wrong on Bernie for sure, but has some great insights about why people voted for trump.
She’s pretty decent on assessing the right. Seems progressive on healthcare, economics, justice, et al. Yet boy oh boy, she falls way short on money in politics + party loyalty.
Still, a worthy conversation. And we can walk away as friends.
Ever notice how Bernie and his supporters are able to articulate profound concepts concisely, while Hillary and hers give us word salad …
Example (Reporter to Candidates): If you become President, will you raise taxes on the rich ?
Bernie: “Hell Yes !”
Hillary: ” … Arugula … Horseradish … Crouton … Artichoke … Fail for Fifteen … ”
During the campaign I usually resisted my urge to troll, except when I was responding to “Amanda’s Very Own Coleslaw” over at Salon …
…
Tasty salad descriptives.
Disagree vehemently with Marcotte’s reasoning on Bernie compared to Trump. She comments solely on the tone of each campaign. Yes, the two were light years apart. What she doesn’t see is that Trump’s rhetoric shifted as soon as Bernie was eliminated from the race. He won, in huge part, by co-opting Bernie’s populist economic message and tailoring it to his low information xenophobic base.
Agree with brinknguyen. Out of touch. Marcotte does herself no favors in this interview. She seems to have little more than a surface knowledge of issues.
This lady is so incredibly out of touch, just like a Clintonite. If I want to hear more garbage like identity politics, I’ll watch CNN and sip on the kool-aid.