Bernie didn't have a flag lapel pin on when he announced.

[Jackpine Radical]

Terrible optics!

Why does he hate America?

[lpbk2713]

1. The latest shipment hasn't arrived from China yet.

[yuiyoshida]

3. Pssssssssssssssssssst

They also sell them in Vietnam now

[Renew Deal]

27. lol

[Buzz Clik]

2. I hope he had his copy of the Constitution in his jacket pocket.

Does he love Jeebus? (I mean REALLY love Jeebus?)

[MohRokTah]

7. Pssssst

Senator Sanders is Jewish. He lost most of his extended family to the Holocaust as his parents came from Poland.

What I want to know is, was he REALLY born in Poland instead of Brooklyn? Has anybody seen the birth certificate?

[Wilms]

13. Well, we could potentially agree on the New Testament.

No?

[Buzz Clik]

15. Good lord. Is the <sarcasm> smilie mandatory these days, even when it's completely obvious?

rhetorical question -- not sarcasm.

[MohRokTah]

19. Pssst

I was participating in the sarcasm by wanting to see his birth certificate to make sure he wasn't born in Poland.

[Buzz Clik]

21. You forgot your :sarcasm:

Geez. Am I a mind reader?

[KittyWampus]

4. Flag pin v. reaching out to people of color. Great thread! So respectful.

[Jackpine Radical]

5. Optics.

It's all optics.

[uponit7771]

12. ... and those optics matter reaching out to people matters more

[peecoolyour]

23. "I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT BERNIE IS GOING TO DO FOR POC"

"HOW WILL TACKLING INCOME INEQUALITY HELP POC?! I DON'T GET IT! AND WHY ARE THERE SO MANY SAILBOATS?!"

[sabrina 1]

26. Seems to me that that particular talking point is racist in itself. Why on EARTH would anyone

try to deny POC jobs, economic security, education etc?

If this is what the smear campaign has come up with, we have nothing to worry about imo.

[peecoolyour]

30. Yep. President Obama on Baltimore:

This is not new. This has been going on for decades. And without making any excuses for criminal activities that take place in these communities, we also know if you have impoverished communities that have been stripped away of opportunity, where children are born into abject poverty, they've got parents, often because of substance abuse problems or incarceration or lack of education, and themselves can't do right by their kids, if it's more likely that those kids end up in jail or dead than that they go to college, and communities where there are no fathers who can provide guidance to young men, communities where there’s no investment, and manufacturing's been stripped away, and drugs have flooded the community and the drug industry ends up being the primary employer for a lot of folks, in those environments, if we think that we're just going to send the police to do the dirty work of containing the problems that arise there without, as a nation, and as a society saying what can we do to change those communities to help lift up those communities and give those kids opportunity, then we're not going to solve this problem, and we'll go through this same cycles of periodic conflicts between the police and communities, and the occasional riots in the streets and everybody will feign concern until it goes away and we just go about our business as usual.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/04/watch-president-obama-talk-about-whats-happening-baltimore

[sabrina 1]

32. Obama agrees with Bernie Sanders. Because both of them are right to insist on economic opportunities

for those who have denied that right for far too long.

Thank you, I dismiss these silly claims which make no sense and have zero basis in fact.

[BrotherIvan]

48. ^^^^^^^That right there^^^^^^^^^^

[sabrina 1]

25. I see they have a new word which most likely came from some expensive Think Tank contracted to

dig for something to smear him with.

'Optics'. Whenever you see a word or phrase repeated as often as this one has been in the past few days, you KNOW it is coming from 'professional smear mongers'.

[Jackpine Radical]

31. That word actually bothers the shit out of me.

"Bad optics" strikes me as carrying the connotation that there is something behind the image that you don't want people to see.

"Optics" is what illusion managers concern themselves with. It's a deflection from substance. And substance is all Bernie's got.

[KittyWampus]

38. the word bothers you but not even bothering to reach out to real, live people for his rally

doesn't.

Sad.

[arcane1]

47. Were those robots at his rally?

They seemed real to me

[sabrina 1]

39. Exactly! It shows that whoever came up with it wants to continue creating illusions for the voters

to hide the truth. 'Make the candidate LOOK good, even if s/he isn't good', in fact especially if that is the case.

Not a good choice of word at all. I get the same reaction as you do. It shows that inside DC operatives are now so deeply ingrained with 'image' creation over 'substance' that they don't even realize what they are revealing.

[KittyWampus]

36. Including people and making an effort to embrace diversity isn't just "optics".

I can see why now so many Sanders' supporters are creating the straw men about him being a racist.

[sabrina 1]

41. Ignoring a candidate's record won't work for anyone. 'Optics'! What does that mean? What it means

is that our politicians need to FOOL the people by putting on a show because those highly paid political 'advisers' in the DC bubble wrongly assume that this is all people care about.

It implies that their candidates need to HIDE something behind nice, glittery packaging.

Don't expect that from Bernie, he doesn't need it.

Shows how out of touch these people are.

Just the 'visuals' please. Ignore the substance'.

Been around those people on occasion. It boggles my mind how out of touch they are with the real world.

[nadinbrzezinski]

42. It is not out if think tanks

has been used for decades and every four years it reappears. If memory serves goes all the way to Reagan and him buying a certain Western Ranch.

"Obama was accused of bad optics, Clinton has a stage and image team that takes care of the optics."

Those are approximations of writing in the political press in 2008.

Tweety uses it often. He tends to use it with the under dog. At times it comes up during the SOTU.

It is a bad term IMO, good filler, but tells you nothing, why I have never used it in my own reporting.

[sabrina 1]

43. When insiders from the DC bubble, such as Tweety eg, latch on to a word, you know it originated

in some Think Tank somewhere. They do dig back into those expensive bags of talking points from time to time.

But I know for a fact that these 'catch phrases' ARE from political think tanks, going way back.

I don't trust people who use OTHER PEOPLE'S words to express themselves.

Can't remember ever not being able to express myself without repeating someone else's 'catch phrase'.

[nadinbrzezinski]

44. I will repeat this

goes to at least Ronald Wilson Reagan, when tweety was writing speeches in the House.

[Jackpine Radical]

46. Like I used to say, anyone who talks a lot about

thinking outside the box is thinking inside the box.

[KittyWampus]

35. No, inclusiveness and diversity is fundamental to the Democratic party

So it goes deeper than optics.

But when your campaign manager has spent his whole career in Vermont… it might not be that obvious.

[MohRokTah]

6. The lack of a flag pin doesn't really come into play until the GE.

Exceptions are made for candidating while black, though (see 2008 election).

[Jackpine Radical]

8. I think the same exception is made for Godless Socialists.

[MohRokTah]

9. They might give a Godless Socialist a pass...

but I think you're onto something if we get a little more specific about a Godless Jewish Socialist. It's probably the equivalent of candidating while black.

[Jackpine Radical]

11. Godless Jewish socialist with weird hair, a rumpled suit & no flag pin.

Dead in the water.

Terrible optics.

[sabrina 1]

28. Who talks sense! THAT is the real problem! He tells the TRUTH! Omg!

Right to their faces too, to the Media, to Wall St to all those who are destroying this country.

THAT is why they will go after him relentlessly with their silly smear attempts.

[Buzz Clik]

18. Obama resisted for a while -- despite the avalanche of criticism, but eventually gave in.

[calimary]

24. Indeed. I remember that. I remember one pathetic upper-middle-aged white woman

who'd just lost her job, lost her benefits, and was facing some pretty dismal times. But somehow, what concerned her most, what struck her as the more unforgivable outrage, the most unbearable affront, the most mortal of all mortal sins - was the absence of a flag pin on the lapel of then-candidate Barack Obama. She just couldn't bring herself to vote for somebody who didn't wear a flag pin. She actually said that. On camera. In all her shining idiot unhinged bubble-dwelling pathetic-ness. I guess when facing devastation and maybe even eviction from her home because of her lost job, she STILL had a key to the front door of that nice safe comforting little CON bubble she lived in full-time, bless her little pin-headed heart. She'd much rather take the rich vulture who cared more about his own bank balance and potential power (and that of all his rich little vulture friends) than he EVER would about her predicament, than she did about the guy who came up from next-to-nothing and actually wanted to try to help people like her.

I swear - I wanted to smack MYSELF in the face with a 2x4 on that one. Could. NOT. Believe. It.

[Jackpine Radical]

33. I got the same thing when phone banking for Obama in 2008.

Some frightened little soul was all hung up on something about Obama not having put his hand over his heart for the Pledge of Allegiance or something. This kind of crap is apparently a standard Fux tactic, and it obviously works on a certain percentage of the population.

I think that when some people become frightened and desperate, their critical faculties shut down & they need to latch onto some symbol that gives them a feeling of security. The cross, the flag & the Pledge are drilled into them as symbols of rectitude and security. If they just let those things guide them, they will be OK.

Kind of like the newly-separated, whimpering puppy whom you can console with a ticking clock near its bed.

[uponit7771]

10. Kerry LOST 2% of the POC vote for doing just like Bernie did, keep thinking NOT speaking to POC...

...issues or overly homogenizing the issues into economic ones or... not have POC working with him will not hurt.

It will

Ask Kerry

[nadinbrzezinski]

14. I read a different speech than you did.

But then again, I have been closely reading ALL OF THEM.

[uponit7771]

22. I didn't read anything about rash of police killings of young black males or read anything that poin

... points to the racism that is in the center of the immigration issue... or anything of that sort

It's not there...

It's the same, give them money and their racism goes away stuff

[nadinbrzezinski]

29. We read a different speech

because he made a direct reference To Ferguson and African American unemployment which to quote is "off the charts."

If you understood, you would know the Senator was the first off the gates after Ferguson with a 5.5 billion dollar minority youth, specifically African American, employment program. He. And LBJ, understood that economics is as integral to civil rights, as civil rights is to economics.

But I do not read any of this crap (and ultimately it is crap) with a partisan eye. So that is the first major difference I s'pose. By the way I found Santorum to be quite over the top in his immigrant and minority hate. Pataki not so much. Those are the three recent ones. I would have to go look at my notes for the soft launch for HRC...oh wait, there was no policy I could sink my teeth inon. And Rubio and Cruz were same old, same old, with the same economic core as the other republicans.

I hope she starts to release some policy, cause a compare and contrast is not possible unless I rely on historic Clinton, including the pesky emails you all hope were destroyed.

[hrmjustin]

16. .

[m-lekktor]

17. I like you sigline pic!

[Jackpine Radical]

34. It's available for theft.

[rock]

20. That alone, is almost enought to make you vote for him!

[sabbat hunter]

37. he MUST hate

'murica! Damn commie nazi bastard!! Does he want to see 'Murica fail?

[Iggo]

40. Good.

[NCTraveler]

45. Republicans notice flag pins.

Democrats recognize diversity. Republicans are petty in every respect.

[hifiguy]

49. Good for him.

Every day I think I like Bernie even more!!