Relax everyone, the Red Army’s not coming to town.
Upper West Siders have for years been used as boogeymen for conservatives from other parts of the country — barely a day goes by when a conservative doesn’t say “Maybe that kind of Commie policy will work on the Upper West Side, but not here in Anytown, USA!” to great applause.
Well, we’re sorry to have to tell Conservative America, but it doesn’t look like that line’s going to work anymore (who are we kidding, that line will always work).
The Community Free Democrats, a political club whose members include Rep. Jerry Nadler, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Comptroller Scott Stringer, voted to endorse Hillary Clinton in the upcoming Democratic primary over Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, an avowed Socialist. Clinton won 59% of the vote, versus 34% for Sanders and 7% for no endorsement. (What, Martin O’Malley is chopped liver?)
To be more precise, Sanders considers himself a “Democratic Socialist” and wants America to look more like Denmark and Sweden, with free access to health care and higher education.
Fun fact: although Clinton was a Senator from New York, Sanders is the real homegrown New Yawkuh, having graduated from James Madison High School in Brooklyn.
“I am so proud CFD is the first political club in New York State to officially support Secretary Clinton, who served us so well as our US Senator, in her campaign for the Presidency,” said club president Stephanie Lasher. “Community Free Democrats eagerly anticipates the excitement and energy we know we will find when we campaign on our neighborhood streets in 2016.”
By the way, if you’re not registered to vote, do it here.
Photos of Sanders and Clinton via flickr.
Careful WSRag, I’d stay away from the politics if I were you, stick to coyote sightings and the new cougar watering holes. This is a community paper, let’s continue to observe dinner party etiquette and refrain from God, country, and Hillary Rodham
F.U. Bring it on. Democratic Socialism works..it always has.. Yet..it always takes a dictator or business man to come in fuck everything up!!!
You seem to take as a given, though, this publication’s preening championing of a form of degeneracy that comes at the direct and incontrovertibly obvious expense of public health*. As has been noted before, the outer limits of diversity in viewpoint here fall well within the confines of Cultural Marxism (even if not economic Marxism.)
*NOTE: Before you reflexively start shouting, “homophobe!”, “bigot!”, “hater!” and come after me with your pitchforks, you might want to consider the following. There is nothing I have said in this post that is not also said by any number of individuals who are themselves openly, actively, passionately and unapologetically PRO-homoerotic. To find examples, put names such “Bill Weintraub” or “Rob McGee”, together with the word, ‘frot’, into your favorite search engine. (And be prepared for graphic, adult content.)
You could also just not read things that you don’t want to read about
I’m with you, RJ. There are enough trolls and fight-pickers as it is…Politics will only bring out the worst in them! I much prefer the neighborhood charm of less inflammatory fare and your “dinner party etiquette” analogy is spot on and appreciated!
You mean bullies, trolls and fight pickers..like the NYPD, KKK or the Nazi’s? Or how about royal bourgeois entitlements??? How would you like Conrad Hilton or Donald Trump to start running things around here? Are those the kind of bullies and trolls you were talking about?
Likening the NYPD to the Klan and Nazis?
I can only hope that you are nothing more than a troll.
@RJ I Think anything is acceptable on the rag! Besides, there is A LOT of talk and banter about luxury housing, poor doors and such which are for the most part political! So I say Carry On WSR! Issues are good to debate!
Brava, Christina, I’m with you 100 per cent!
Bernie Sanders is just not a solid thinker nor is he very honest….After years of trying to install FREE state wide healthcare in Vermont the state abandoned the project recently saying they couldn’t cover the cost ($400 million deficit annually)….so now good ole Socialist Bernie wants to instal his unworkable program nationwide….now that’s really laughable….
OK – so local UWS politicians support Hillary – that’s news??! She’s leaning so far left now she’s getting coming down with LEFTIST whiplash LOL
the “unworkable” health care program that Bernie wants to install nationwide is single-payer. this program already IS installed nation-wide, only limited to seniors. it’s called Medicare. It is also installed in all provinces in Canada and runs just fine. they wouldn’t give it up for anything and no major Canadian party, including the Conservatives, wants to dismantle their health care system.
Maybe Bernie’s on to something.
I can always count on Bruce to knock it out of the park! Knows what he’s talking about; always says it better than anyone else.
Elizabeth: thank you for making me smile! 🙂
I love it!! “you want single payer health insurance? move to Canada!!”
Perhaps a move to Canada is in your future??
Sadly, my husband and I HAVE actually traveled to Canada for health care. The Canadians paid a pittance for major surgery. My husband paid $7,000. Our US insurance covered…$300.
Why Canada? Toronto had the only internationally-recognized surgical hospital for what he needed. The US lags in certain medical procedures. Canada is actually more advanced in certain medical procedures.
I’m baffled as to why anyone, other than the wealthy, would oppose free health care for all Americans.
Are there people out there who are happy paying really high premiums on health insurance each month and then being stuck with 20% of the medical bills for hospital treatment?
Has anyone really looked at the EOBs from Aetna or Oxford? I look and I can see the fancy mathematics they do to pay as little as possible.
SO them ….why did Vermont abandon the project?
Do you people remember a little thing called “Watergate”? “Is our president a crook?” Hillary Clinton, as a young lawyer was a member of the Democrat staff investigating the crimes of the Nixon administration. She was fired by the chief Democrat for being an “an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”
That resume point would have ended the career of any Republican. If Sarah Palin had been a lawyer who had been fired for those reasons, it would have ended the McCain campaign.
As a child of Watergate, I sat around the dinner table for many Passover, Rosh Hashana, Yom Kipper and Thanksgiving dinners. I remember evrerything that I heard the adults say about Nixon and his administration. I read ever issue of US News, Newsweek, Time, NY TImes. I heard everything that Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, Bob Evans, Bob McNeil, said. I read Art Buckwald and Doonesbury religiously. (Up the Seine and Down the Potomac with Art Buckwald should be required reading for all Poli Sci students)
Hillary Clinton is the Democratic parties version of Richard Nixon. She has used public office for private gain, sold pardons, lied to the public, destroyed a government server, erased emails, sold favors to foreign governments. Even Nixon did not do half the stuff she has done. Compared to her, the break in at the Watergate was a silly frat prank.
Any Democrat of that generation who votes for Hillary, owes Nixon, Agnew, Halderman, Erlichman, Zeigler, Dean and Liddy the mother of all apologies. One has to wonder: Had Nixon and Agnew been liberal, anti-war, pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage Progressive Democrats, would they have been forced out in disgrace?
I realize the Upper West side is liberal, but is it too much to ask that you hold Hillary to the same standards that you held Pres. Nixon and Vice President Agnew?
Jeff, Snopes.com debunks your claim about Hillary here:
https://www.snopes.com/politics/clintons/zeifman.asp
1.) I wonder how many people remember or are even old enough to know a certain less-than-honorable chapter in Senator Barney Frank’s history. Back in 1989, a Sodomite prostitution ring, run by a carnally intimate acquaintance of the esteemed senator, was discovered to have been operating out of his home. Regardless of anything else about that case, imagine,for a moment, the following. Everything were the same– all of the critical details– save for two:
a) the professionals of ill-repute involved, instead of being males that catered to other males, were females that catered to males, and,
b) the pol implicated, instead of being an openly “gay”* Democrat as Frank is, was instead a heterosexual Republican (or even a heterosexual Democrat, for that matter– at least one who was relatively conservative)
All of the other details of the case, however, would have been identical.
Would the pol have survived the scandal? Would he, as Frank, who was at the time a member of the House of Representatives, have gone on to become a prominent member of the senate for so many years?
Is there even any question as to the answer? Think of all the pols whose careers were ruined by nothing more than an extra-marital affair (utterly reprehensible from a moral and ethical perspective but, unlike prostitution, entirely legal).
2.) Although somewhat of a tangent, I would like to point-out that despite the way the political map has largely been drawn, there is absolutely no inherent connection between the first position you enumerated (anti-war) and the next two (“pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage”).
(*I deliberately specified “gay”, as opposed to “homosexual”. Imagine if the pol had merely been a homosexual, one who dissents from prevailing, politically and socially correct “LGBTQ” agenda and culture, (someone like Frot Movement founder Bill Weintraub or conservative, irreverently witty blogger Rob McGee, for example). Would such a pol have received the same special consideration that Frank obviously did? I am not so sure.
Barney Frank never served in the Senate. He retired from the House of Representatives in 2013.
I stand corrected. Somehow, I got confused and had in my mind that Frank had moved-up to the senate years ago.
The point I was making in my post, though, stands all the same.
If everything about the scandal were the same, save for the two key differences I enumerated, would the pol in Frank’s place have survived it? Would he have been such a celebrated political figure for so many years as Frank was and still is in retirement?
@ Jeff Berger: You, sir, stand-out from the herd. Quite refreshing here.
False according to Snopes
https://www.snopes.com/politics/clintons/zeifman.asp
“This passage leaves many readers with the belief that Hillary Rodham took it upon herself to decide that President Nixon should not be represented by counsel during evidentiary hearings, to deliberately draft a brief that ignored precedent in that area, and to personally hide evidence of the precedent she had ignored so that no one could discover her dishonesty. But nearly everything stated in this passage is wrong: Hillary Rodham didn’t draft a legal brief that was “unethical” (save that it made a legal argument Zeifman didn’t agree with), she didn’t “confiscate” public documents, and she didn’t do anything that she hadn’t been directed to do by her supervisor (and Zeifman’s). ”
also see
https://jacksonville.com/reason/fact-check/2014-03-08/story/fact-check-was-hillary-clinton-fired-watergate-investigation
“So what are we to make of all this? Calabrese’s interview with Zeifman has been published around the Internet and repeated by pundits such as Rush Limbaugh and Neil Boortz. But there is nothing to out-and-out confirm Zeifman’s rendition. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t be true, but it makes it difficult to arrive at the truth.”
Except the people behind Snoopes are Progressive Democrats who have made contributions to said causes.
They were fine in the beginning, but they have moved a little to close to Gawker territory politically. They are reliable, but I worked in Washington for a Member of Congress and heard this story from Democrats as well as Republicans with whom I have complete faith. I heard it from committed Democrats who have no desire to help Republicans.
One of the most intelligent and insightful things I’ve read in a while. Nice job Jeff.
THANK YOU!! That is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me on the UWS. Usually I am told to shut up so that was very kind of you. Are you one of us? Please type the secret handshake 🙂
As an aside, when I lived in NW Washington in the 1980’s, I used to see Liddy parked in front of Wagshal’s Deli (DC’s version of Zabar’s) He owned a black BMW with the plate “H20 Gate”. I thought that was really in your face funny.
Jeff – I wish there was “like” button for the H20gate comment.
I always thought it was funny watching Liddy order Pastrami on Rye and a Dr. Brown. Only in Washington!
Well, I for one, am not a Clinton fan. I’m just hoping Biden will run.
Sanders is certainly a strange cat. Calls himself a Democratic Socialist but presides over a state with some of the most relaxed gun laws in the world. I kinda doubt Vermont’s gun control laws would be welcomed in Denmark and Sweden.
Bernie Sanders does not set Vermont’s gun laws nor “preside” over Vermont. He is a Senator, not a Governor.
and do you spend every waking hour trying to figure out how to be an insulting a**hole? or more of one?
Bernie Sanders has actually voted for all major gun control bills in the US Senate in the last 10 years, including the recent bills for background checks and assault weapons bans. I don’t know how that jives with your argument that he hasn’t “rocked the boat” on gun control. Certainly the NRA doesn’t agree with him.
Do you spend every waking hour of every day policing this forum? The word “preside” is not confined to governors. It can mean any person holding a position of authority. But of course you knew that, forum czar.
The point I was making (which you were too obtuse to get) is that Sanders comes from a state where rocking the boat on gun rights means you will soon be out of a job. So he has played ball…yet calls himself a “Democratic Socialist.”
H.Clinton is a common thug. That alone should be to shut the door on her, but the US politics are sold to the highest bidder. And she is one.
Now, listen up:
If anybody can get out a message to Mr. Sanders: CHANGE BACK TO INDEPENDENT, drop the nomination contest with Clinton, and the we all will have HONEST ELECTION, choosing between candidates and not between the thugs that the corrupt machine throws at us. Anyone with me on this?
I’m just hoping that the presumed front-runners (Clinton and Bush III) implode under the weight of their presumptiveness (and we know, at least, how much Upper West Siders love the attitude of entitlement shown by each).
Then we might get a race between those now lying in wait and hoping for “the call” — say, De Blasio versus Chris Christie. Now would that be a *fun* race or what??
But, as of now, I agree: We could sure use a good, plausible Independent (think John Anderson, not Ralph Nader). The current line-up is just frightening.
That is hilarious!!! De Blasio v. Chris Christie. Now we are talking some drama! Hijinks! Stolen bridges! Entombed tunnels! Awesomeness.
I’d actually like to see Celebrity Death Match: Chris Christie v. Vladimir Putin. Odds, anyone?
In 2012, I told my sister, “Watch out, Jeb Bush is going to run and he’s going to win in 2016. I know it.” She, being a Floridian, groaned.
It’s utterly depressing, but you’ll see that I’m right. Then, we will be able to thank the entire middle of the country for that.
I’d take Putin over any of the candidates currently in the field from either wing of the Democrat/Republican bird-of-prey.
Those attracted to Bernie Sanders, who turn out to see him by the thousands, are undoubtedly Democrats who don’t want to vote for Clinton.
There are probably many New Yorkers, even Upper West Siders, who do not want to vote for Mrs Clinton but who are looking more toward the center than farther to the left.
Remember “Democrats for Nixon” when George McGovern ran? (No, most of you probably don’t remember that, but the few grown-ups among us can confirm it.) I would not be surprised, if the Republicans pick their candidate wisely, if such a “Democrats for XXX” movement were to take hold in this election too. (“Democrats for Anybody but Hillary”??)
With that said, though, I’m not sure the current 14 runners present the Republicans with a choice who would be palatable to disenchanted Democrats.
I am an Upper West Sider and support Rand Paul for president. There is more political diversity on the UWS than in the past.
A bunch of crooks, all of them!
Is Bernie Sanders a crook?
Died-in-the-wool Cultural Marxist, no doubt. And many other things. But crook?
I agree that they are all a bunch of crooks. Folks accuse Hillary of being an unethical lawyer back in the day. Isn’t that redundant (and pretty much applicable to most politicians)?
I am fairly certain that the choices next November will be Jeb! vs Hillary. The GOP always picks the next-in-line or the big name (Nixon ’60, Nixon ’68, Reagan ’80, Bush ’88, Dole ’96, Bush ’00, McCain ’08, Romney, ’12 – ’nuff said). I’m an Upper West Sider so I’ll vote my tribe. Neither candidate will do much of what they promise BUT there is a difference between whom they would nominate to the Supreme Court. That is Supreme to me.
You must be confused about UWS identity. All the Liberal Socialist Democrats (well, most of us atleast)
have moved on or died. It’s all about the $$ expense
of living there and the loss of a real neighborhood.
Exactly right. There are no UWS’ers left on the UWS. Looks very much like the UES or Long Island to me…..
What were people’s reasons for choosing Hillary over Bernie? How many preferred Sanders’ positions but chose Clinton because they felt that she would be more electable? How many acknowledged that Sanders’, whatever else one may say about him, is almost certainly many cuts above Clinton (either one) when it comes to credibility and personal integrity?
“9d8b7988045e4953a882” wrote,
I do not find it that surprising that an Upper West Sider would support Rand Paul. Like his father Ron, there are actually a number of points-of-convergence between Rand’s positions and those of Cultural Marxists. And, also like his father Ron, much of Rand’s “libertarianism” is quite “cool” to many in or near the college-age demographic.
What would surprise me is if there were anyone else here who, for example, voted for Constitution Party candidate Virgil H. Goode, Jr. for President in 2012. Or who would much sooner vote for someone like Sen. Jeff Sessions (Alabama) or Rep. Steve King (Iowa) over any of the hacks currently in the field– from either wing of the Democrat/Republican bird-of-prey. I suspect I may be the only one with such dissident views and voting preferences in this bastion of Cultural Marxist orthodoxy.