Ridiculously over the top rant about a candidate not to my taste and their supporters

Personal insults, hyperbolic distorted cherry picking and lots of virtual spittle.

The vast majority of non-troll DUers will vote for the Democratic nominee in the general

Outside of DU I'm not so sure, I'm of the opinion that many of the non voters, crossover voters and occasional voters who are enthused by Bernie simply won't bother to show up at the polls if Bernie is not the nominee.

I really don't have a good handle on the Hillary supporters but given the way things turned out in 2008 I suspect that at least some of them have as strong an emotional attachment to Hillary as many Bernie supporters do to him and they too won't show up although probably not as big a percentage of them as the Sandernistas.

The Democratic party desperately needs to increase turnout not just of Democrats but people who while not Democrats as such will vote for Democrats if sufficiently motivated, I honestly don't see Hillary doing that and I think Sanders might be able to, there are a lot of people out there who don't feel either party is on their side and for that reason don't bother to vote. Quite a few of them turned out for Obama in the elections where he was on the ballot but Obama was to a big extent a tabula rasa, a blank slate without much legislative or executive record and people projected their own wishes on him.

Neither Hillary nor Bernie is a Barack Obama and neither will have all of Obama's coalition.

Right wing talk radio and Fox News don't really want a Republican President

Yeah, they have a political agenda but money comes before politics (or anything else for that matter) for these slimeballs and there is nothing on this planet that will increase their ratings and hence their income than a Hillary Clinton Presidency.

RW talk radio and Fox are all about anger, anger is addictive and will keep people tuning in to get another fix. A Republican government doing what they say they want is the last thing the rabble rousers actually want because then their target audience will not be as angry and they will lose a percentage of them and with that loss comes a loss of income.

They are pushing their audience toward the most extreme candidates, Trump and Carson, because they think those will be the weakest Republican candidates in the general. Yes, the base will come out and vote like crazy for them but for both parties the base cannot win on their own, they need some swing voters and any halfway sane swing voters are going to go to the Democratic candidate rather than the obviously unhinged Republican one.

Follow the money.

Are there any poor people on the internet?

I just had a conversation with a DUer who implied that no poor person can be on the internet. To my ears at least he sounded just like the Republicans who claim if you have a refrigerator, a cell phone or a flat screen TV you can't be poor.

I can get an internet capable computer complete with monitor for $20 at yard sales, flea markets and thrift stores, I'd have to pay more than that for a flat screen TV at the same places because they are more in demand than old computers. An internet connection can be had for free or very low cost if you know what you are doing.

In my view that poster was full of shit but I'm wondering what you think.

The endless campaign season is part of the reason people hate politics and don't turn out

Even for those of us who are interested and engaged in politics the campaigns are long and sometimes difficult to take, for most of the general public they just want the stupid mudslinging crap to stop and for all the candidates to STFU. All most people can think of on election day is "Thank God it's over".

The M$M doesn't help things any, they loathe talking about policy and love talking about scandal no matter how tenuous or idiotic because scandal is what draws eyeballs and hence revenue while policy discussions motivate most of the public to frantically hit the channel button on their remote. By the time of the general a substantial segment of the public thinks all the candidates are sociopathic assholes who shouldn't be allowed to operate a dishwasher without adult supervision and I frankly can't blame them.

We have met the enemy and he is us.

I don't think there is a serious poster here who expects to change another poster's mind

I know I certainly don't expect to change any other poster from Hillary to Bernie.

On the other hand DU is a "tough room" and GD-P is an even tougher one, a lot of people are intimidated by the level of vitriol in here and never post but only lurk and those are the people I hope to reach.

Take a look at any highly recced thread in GD-P and you'll see names that never post in this forum, they are lurking in here reading the threads and there are undoubtedly other lurkers who never register and hence never show up at all.

I know out in real life three people who read DU on an occasional basis but have never registered here or in fact on any discussion type forum. Lurkers outnumber posters on every forum I've ever seen the statistics for, usually by several times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lurker

Holy Herring Breath! Berkeley Breathed has been lurking in GD-P

“I admire the serene assurance of those who have religious faith."

"It is wonderful to observe the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.” -Mark Twain

Clearly we don't have any Christians holding four aces in GD-P.

I don't think I've seen a less serene environment since the last time I ran the lawnmower over the big fire ant nest down by the utility pole.

Carson is my favorite for the Republican nomination

By my favorite I think he would be the easiest of the Republican candidates for any Democrat to beat in the general, Trump, Cruz, Rubio and even Jeb! would be more difficult. Carson's only real appeal would be to evangelicals and although they are a reliable voting bloc and a fairly large one they aren't enough to offset the voters who would be put off by Carson's blatant idiocy and his race.

So the way I see it if Sanders can simultaneously bash the media's obsession with personality and ever so gently promote the least electable of the major Republican candidates then it's a win-win situation.

Birmingham Alabama launches first in nation electric bike share program..

Birmingham Mayor William Bell said it's been more than a decade since he's ridden a bike, but he donned the helmet Wednesday and led a group ride unlike any the city has seen before.

It was a parade of cyclists from Regions Field to Birmingham City Hall on bikes from the new Zyp BikeShare program.

(. . .)

West said the bikeshare program was the first in North America with electric pedal assist bikes, which have a motor that will help riders get up Birmingham's many hills.

"We are not only launching the most high-tech bikeshare system in the U.S.," she said, "but we are launching the most beautiful system in the world right now."