Shocking news of the century: Tulsi Gabbard leaves Democratic party

[Deleted member 215]

Tulsi Gabbard, who sought 2020 Democratic nomination, says she's leaving party | CNN Politics

Former congresswoman and 2020 presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard announced on Tuesday that she is leaving the Democratic Party.

www.cnn.com

I mean, she's not wrong about U.S. intervention in Latin America. But then she whines about wokeness and "anti-white racism", so meh...I'm sure she'll be a Trump supporter/Kanye soon enough.

Like, I've noticed a lot of right-wing grievance rhetoric consists of "Russian reversals": BLM are the real racists. LGBT people are the real bigots. Socialists are the real fascists. Everyone fighting against some kind of injustice is the actual perpetrator of that injustice. That's the big "con" that the right thinks leftists don't get.

 

[fooferdoggie]

man this is like the right wing wolf grail of word salad.
“I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party. It’s now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue & stoking anti-white racism, who actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms enshrined in our Constitution,” Gabbard said in a video posted to social media. The announcement was made on the first episode of her new podcast, “The Tulsi Gabbard Show.”

 

[Deleted member 215]

Seriously. She made sure to say "God-given" even though she's not a Christian. She probably literally had a checklist of phrases.

 

[fooferdoggie]

Seriously. She made sure to say "God-given" even though she's not a Christian. She probably literally had a checklist of phrases.

I think your automatically converted when choosing to be a republican. kinda like how Mormons will baptize dead people. it sure looks ink She drank the Q-ade.

 

[lizkat]

man this is like the right wing wolf grail of word salad.
“I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party. It’s now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue & stoking anti-white racism, who actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms enshrined in our Constitution,” Gabbard said in a video posted to social media. The announcement was made on the first episode of her new podcast, “The Tulsi Gabbard Show.”

Sheesh. For "an elitist cabal of warmongers," I'd point Tulsi Gabbard at some of the dudes who reported to Bush the son during his presidency. I'd hardly call Dick Cheney or Paul Wolfowitz et al "driven by [any kind of] wokeness." They were certainly all in for a strong unitary executive branch though, so long as it was run by a Republican.

I also don't know that "elite" is the right descriptor for a bunch of guys pitching the existence of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction so hard for so long that they finally even got a fomerly honorable Secretary of State to cave in and close the sale at the UN by including stuff in his speech that the CIA wanted out because it was either not true, not vetted or not relevant to facts on the ground in Iraq at that time.

But I do know that even though Cheney got Wolfowitz to tone down his initial Defense Planning Guide for Bush so it didn't sound quite so imperialist, none of those guys was averse to spreading "democracy" at point of a sword in 2003 while ostensibly retaliating for the 9/11 attacks, which in no way were ever proven to have arisen from any planning assists from Saddam Hussein.

Those guys were hellbent on regime change in Iraq, no matter what State had warned them about with respect to the risks of sectarian civil war in Iraq. Bush 43, when told of Sunni v Shia hostilities in a suddenly post-Saddam landscape, had said something like well hell he had just thought Iraqis were all Muslims.

Anyway that crew were a lot of things in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, but "woke" is never going to be one of them, no matter who revises history from what perspective. And no matter how Tulsi Gabbard likes to characterize members of either her former or current political party.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

This seems to be a habit of weak principled progressives who try to sell their wares on major conservative media when major liberal media demonizes them. A few stints with Hannity or Carlson and they go "They like me! They really like me! I’ll say anything that will make them like me more! …Woke is the devil! Patriot! White is the new black! Legitimate rape!"

 

[lizkat]

This seems to be a habit of weak principled progressives who try to sell their wares on major conservative media when major liberal media demonizes them. A few stints with Hannity or Carlson and they go "They like me! They really like me! I’ll say anything that will make them like me more! …Woke is the devil! Patriot! White is the new black! Legitimate rape!"

I liked Gabbard when she was taking on the DNC in 2016, because I was royally ticked that the DNC's intentionally leaked lean towards Clinton was so strong right off the bat -- the whole "it was her turn in 2008 and that went south so it's definitely her turn now" thing-- that people like James Webb bowed out by the fall of 2015, way before voters even registered names of 2016 candidates except for Hillary Clinton.

People said oh Clinton, ok... or oh Clinton, no way... all this was way before she finally announced in the spring. Gabbard was rightly calling out the DNC in the autumn of 2015 because they were angling to schedule primary debates for weird times like weekends or opposite sports events. No one was meant to watch them...

So the pro-Clinton thumb was on the scale way back in that fall season. It wasn't quite clear at that time how populist the sentiment in the USA on both left and right was going to become in the following year. The DNC had blinders on by then, and took the media with it, if we recall how Bernie Sanders' rallies were treated until his popularity had passed the point of being an elephant in the living room of even the New York Times.

Anyway after Tulsi stepped down from her officer's post in the DNC, she seemed to go off on a whole different tack in her politics. I get it that she was distressed over being called out by pro-Clinton DNC leader Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, but hey politics is not beanbag, you make choices and live with the flak and move on or move out. Tulsi did more than move on, for sure; it's like the experience fundamentally changed how she saw the party and herself in it.

How she operated after that also changed how a lot of her constituents in Hawaii viewed her from that time on. I certainly had lost interest before she came off as defending Assad's behavior in Syria. I wouldn't have gone so far as some did in suggesting she had become a Russian asset, but you can become something without ever signing up for it sometimes.

So yeah, she made some really bad moves for a pol who was once trying to represent "progressive" values in the Democratic Party.

 

[Macky-Mac]

....So yeah, she made some really bad moves for a pol who was once trying to represent "progressive" values in the Democratic Party.

I'm not of the opinion that she ever really represented "progressive" values. Her history is filled with support for a broad range of right wing culture wars positions.

 

[lizkat]

I'm not of the opinion that she ever really represented "progressive" values. Her history is filled with support for a broad range of right wing culture wars positions.

Well I only ever heard of her when she was taking on Wasserman-Schultz over the early lean to Clinton... so she certainly came off as progressive compared to that crew in 2016.

LOL on the other hand one of the dropouts from the 2016 Dem campaign was a definite blue dog, come to think of it: James Webb of Virginia. After his dropout, he was the one who signaled well into 2016 that not only would he not be voting for Clinton, he might even vote for Trump. Man, ya never know...

And see that was what was annoying Gabbard, that these guys like Webb who were potential opponents of Clinton were dropping out before the primary debates, because no one would even be watching them, thanks to the weird DNC-proposed debate schedules. And it would be hard for them to round up national name recognition otherwise.

So you could be right that she was less of a progressive than maybe a blue dog Dem at best, back in those days.

 

[Macky-Mac]

Well I only ever heard of her when she was taking on Wasserman-Schultz over the early lean to Clinton... so she certainly came off as progressive compared to that crew in 2016.

LOL on the other hand one of the dropouts from the 2016 Dem campaign was a definite blue dog, come to think of it: James Webb of Virginia. After his dropout, he was the one who signaled well into 2016 that not only would he not be voting for Clinton, he might even vote for Trump. Man, ya never know...

And see that was what was annoying Gabbard, that these guys like Webb who were potential opponents of Clinton were dropping out before the primary debates, because no one would even be watching them, thanks to the weird DNC-proposed debate schedules. And it would be hard for them to round up national name recognition otherwise.

So you could be right that she was less of a progressive than maybe a blue dog Dem at best, back in those days.

I first heard of her when some of the right wing posters on PRSI started posting about "a hot babe!" who likes guns and is against gun control.....and wow, she's "a hot babe!!!".......so maybe she might be a democrat they could support.

I'd not heard of her before and I figured I should find out more about her in case she became a contender. Amongst other negatives, her record in the Hawaii legislature had been as a hard core "family values" activist with a strong anti-gay rights agenda. She seemed a natural for the right wing of the Republicans. However being a democrat may have been necessary for her to get elected to congress, so perhaps that's why she became a democrat.

Supposedly she "saw the light" and modified some of her views.....hmmmm......but now she's clearly in Tucker Carlson territory.

 

[GermanSuplex]

Talk about coming out of left field. I did not see this coming, nor did I see it when the MAGA cult began praising her and she subbed for Tucker Carlson on his nights off. Flabbergasted. Gobsmacked.

 

[Deleted member 215]

Yeah, I remember a lot of people scolding leftists for being dismissive of Tulsi; sorry I couldn't get behind an "ex-homophobe" that Trump supporters were gushing over. No thanks. Screw her and screw her "transformation", which is really just ticking off right-wing talking points to promote her podcast.

 

[lizkat]

Yeah, I remember a lot of people scolding leftists for being dismissive of Tulsi; sorry I couldn't get behind an "ex-homophobe" that Trump supporters were gushing over. No thanks. Screw her and screw her "transformation", which is really just ticking off right-wing talking points to promote her podcast.

She has become a vocal admirer of india's Modi. Defensive when people get loud about the damage and dangers of Hindu nationalism, she says her admiration is for India's progress and that the USA's relationship to India "is so crucial." Yeah which is surely why India has bought Soviet and then Russian weapons for eons...