People on the alt left seem much more concerned about how pure booker is

[La Lioness Priyanka]

Than how racist sessions is.

The alt left will never be my friend.

[HassleCat]

1. Purity does not concern me.

But I am worried that both my senators are among the Democrats who failed to do the right thing. I guess Booker is getting a lot of attention because his star is seen to be rising within the party.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

3. He's getting attention because he is testifying against his colleagues

Which is what all the Dems should do, when the colleague is Jeff Sessions

[RiverStone]

16. Agree! We need lots more Booker type resistance...

Over the next 4 years!

Kudos to Cory for speaking out against another bigot in tRumps fascist regime!

[Hortensis]

65. +10,000. Media slant: breaking precedent,

testifying against a colleague, as if breaking from the crowd is the key issue here. Disgusting.

[Stellar]

2. I'm not sure what the alt left is?

[La Lioness Priyanka]

4. People who criticized obama non stop and voted

For stein or Johnson or stayed home and think we should have awarded Bernie the nomination although he got 4 million votes less.

People who call us neoliberals invested only in identity politics while ignoring the glorious WWC.

That type of people

[Stellar]

5. Okay, learn something every day. Thanks. nt

[La Lioness Priyanka]

6. It's very commonly used on twitter

[Stellar]

8. Okay. I don't do Twitter but thanks anyway.

[BlueCaliDem]

7. Yep. 100% spot on! eom

[bettyellen]

55. Nailed it! I'm stealing this because I know you well enough, LOL.

[brewens]

50. It's fictitious. Like the "librul media" the right came up with. But now it's people that should

be on our side doing it to us. Our only choice now is supposed to be center-right to far-right. We can't expect our government to actually do anything for us with our tax dollars. Might as well put "In Goldman Sachs We Trust" on our money.

[SaschaHM]

9. I've kind of had it up to here with...

sanctimonious white progressives. Especially the ones on DU and the glee with which they go after PoC and women when they have done something that they don't like.

President Barack Obama.
John Lewis.
The Congressional Black Caucus.
Donna Brazile.
Now Cory Booker.

I'm just glad that DU isn't representative of the Democratic party because we would be shedding PoC like crazy if these "let's stop focusing on Identity Politics "Progressives"" were all that interacted with them. I'm also glad that PoC will be there to throw a wrench in their plan on ignoring us to try and court the WWC that left the party decades ago.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

10. Yup

[BainsBane]

11. Some 14 Dems voted against the amendment

Yet Booker is the fall guy.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

15. Because we are preparing to run a 85 year old

In 2020

Lol

[brer cat]

24. I agree.

They are quick to make anyone not meeting their purity test into an enemy, not just someone they disagree with on certain issues. That is no way to build a coalition to defeat republicans.

[Demit]

12. I'm concerned about his support for charter schools.

I am not a fan of the movement to privatize education.

[marybourg]

30. Do you now, or have you ever had,

a child in the Newark, NJ school system?

[Demit]

32. No. But I don't think he limits his support for charter schools to Newark.

[marybourg]

33. No. But his perceptions,

like all of our perceptions, are colored by his experiences.

I am very much against charter schools also, but I do have empathy for what Cory Booker was exposed to, and more importantly, what he was responsible for, when he was Mayor of Newark.

Although I don't agree with him on this subject, I don't hold his desire to do whatever possible for his constituents, whose school system was (and probably still is) in dire straits against him.

And - I think he's being singled out for criticism here.

[Demit]

39. I'm assuming everyone who develops a policy does it based on perceptions & experiences.

Like Betsy DeVos, whose family has been using its wealth & influence to get rid of public education & instead divert taxpayer dollars into privatized education. If she's confirmed as Sec'y of Education, she'll be responsible for education policy and she'll have the power to implement nationwide what she believes in. Then look out, public education.

So I'm not singling out Corey Booker. He has a lot of company.

[Fearless]

13. Calling people more liberal than you alt left?

[La Lioness Priyanka]

14. No, calling people who only know how to destroy

Without having a clue about how to build coalitions the alt left.

[Ellen Forradalom]

25. The crowd who torpedoed Hubert Humphrey

to give us Richard Nixon and Al Gore to gift us with George W. Bush is the same bunch who shit on Hillary to give us Trump. It is a pure exercise in privilege. I have no use for them.

[nycbos]

26. Took the words out of my mouth.

[Ellen Forradalom]

28. I have one of these types in my family

It is, in its own way, worse than dealing with a hardcore conservative. He's been living in lily white college enclaves for decades and dear God it shows.

[nycbos]

29. I used to be like that.

Then I wised up.

[Fearless]

37. Lily white?

Homophobic aided slurs?

[Ellen Forradalom]

44. A longstanding expression

Meaning so very white in population as to resemble the lily flower, with politics to match.
See meaning #2 at Merriam Webster.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lily%E2%80%93white

[Fearless]

45. A long-standing homophobic slur.

[Chitown Kev]

46. No, it's not

I can cite the usage of the term "lily white" in black newspapers going back over 100 years.

It always was a pejorative...but never (to my knowledge) homophobic and I don't know where you get that from.

[Fearless]

47. I "get that from" being gay myself.

[Chitown Kev]

48. Oh, I'm gay as well...as the day is long

I've never heard "lily white" used as a homophobic pejorative...now I have heard a very few black gays use but that's not as a homophobic term...

I can even cite my source...was surprised to find this in my files (I thought that I had trashed this once I no longer needed it)...

There's an old Chicago Defender story from 1916, I believe, headlined "White Lady Finds No 'Jim Crow' Cars in This City...it's a news story about a woman identified in the story as a "stubborn southern winch" who wanted to make a black woman give up her seat on a bus in Chicago. The black woman refused to move and the white woman spit on her...the white woman was arrested and released...I don't have the second page of the story but I do remember the use of the term "lily white" in the story and you can find the term more frequently than you might think in black newspapers circa 1910-1950.

It was not being used as a homophobic slur.

Now, I am not going to say that you haven't heard it used that way...but that would have been in a very different context not applicable to this context.

EDIT: You might also want to look at another use of the term which goes back to the 19th century and is quite applicable to today's politics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lily-white_movement

[La Lioness Priyanka]

59. You're not the only gay in this village

Lily white is not a homophobic term

[La Lioness Priyanka]

58. Lily white is a long standing term

That has nothing to do with being queer.

Look up the lily white movement in the Republican Party for context.

[Fearless]

34. The only one on the left building coalitions is Sanders

Or are you ignoring the hundreds of events he's sponsoring across the country this week?

[La Lioness Priyanka]

36. Sanders is not the only one building movement

The NAACP, BLM, planned parenthood etc have been building movements continuously

Also it's interesting that you think this post is about Bernie

[Fearless]

38. And none of those are politicians in the Democratic party

They're groups of people outside of politics.

I actually agree with your OP. Minus the alt left slur.

And it is a slur meant to denigrate the progressive Democratic population.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

40. The alt left exists and is a destructive force

Just because you want to make this about sanders, doesn't mean it is. The op is Not about sanders, and is about a small percentage of his supporters and those who voted third party.

The alt left needs to be less racist, and when they are, i can use nicer words to describe them but as long as they denigrate my issues by merely calling them identity politics, I will call them the alt left.

[Fearless]

42. You're claiming an unquantifiable number of people

Made Trump win?

A neo liberal group?

Or a libertarian group?

The phrase alt left is used in common meaning as those who followed Bernie. But it's also those who believe FDR. Those who fight for equal rights for all groups.

If what you mean is people who voted third party or for Trump for racist reasons they are either neo liberal or libertarian depending on why they did so. Not alt left which is a slur against progressive democrats.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

43. You are wrong about the phrase, it does not mean all sanders primary voters

[Eliot Rosewater]

22. More liberal?

People who may have voted 3rd party thus giving us Donald Trump are MORE liberal than the poster you are talking to?

Wow, I think I have now heard it ALL.

[Fearless]

35. 66 million people voted for Clinton

62 million views for Trump. How many voted for a third party again???

[bowens43]

17. alt-left???? Really?

disgusting.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

18. You haven't heard the term? And yes, they do disgust me

[Eliot Rosewater]

23. I am still trying to figure out how many of them were outright republican plants

from the "get-go."

Either there were millions of these extremely confused people who dont understand how a two party political system works or they were doing the work of either the Kremlin or the GOP or both.

Result is we have a situation that may actually mean the end of all life, certainly it will mean war and much death, only question is how much?

[nycbos]

27. Indeed.

They dismiss anyone who is to the right of Trotsky as a neocon.

[DonCoquixote]

60. cory can be great for fightign sessions

and horrible for denying people access to cheap canadian medicine. It is possible to like one action and dislike another.

[Coolest Ranger]

20. What is disgusting

are the ones who defend them and who act like they are pure while the rest of us should not have a voice

[La Lioness Priyanka]

41. Agreed

[Coolest Ranger]

19. Whenever

the alt left gets angry about something, I do the opposite of what they are demanding. Most of the time I wait because eventually they all will get discredited

[BlueMTexpat]

21. Same here.

I thought that I was done with them in 2000 when they helped to give us Dubya.

But Trump is even worse. I am certainly finished with them now.

[Maven]

31. Nailed it.

Also interesting how little we've heard from Bernie re: Russian election interference and GOP treason.

[Quayblue]

49. This. Nt

[JHan]

51. It's pretty messed up....

to see many criticize him with the same intensity they're criticizing the republican repeal of the ACA, if not more so.

I get the complexities but really?

[FiveGoodMen]

52. Considering what 'Alt-right' means...

...I'd say that using 'Alt-left' was trying to pick a fight.

[wryter2000]

53. Holy carp

Booker isn't good enough for them?

They have to be trolls.

[JDC]

54. Using the term Alt Left creates a false equivalency

Comparing Liberals being more <or> less upset - in your opinion - with booker over a drug vote than the Sessions appointment to neo - nazi's is fucked up. The two don't do a side by side. That sounds like a trump idea.

[Uponthegears]

56. And yet another ad hominem

Nickname in lieu of a discussion of the issue.

Corey's testimony against Sessions (who, and not to minimize a certain PEOTUS' capacity for scuminess, is one of the most despicable people to walk the earth) was magnificent and inspiring.

His lesser-known opposition to the death penalty is courageous beyond belief given that many of his more moderate supporters might reject him for that reason alone.

His vote against the Sanders reimportation bill and in favor of the alternate reimportation bill with the unnecessary and ultra cost inflating "safety" test for drugs that were inspected before they ever left the country did not live up to either of the prior two.

As a black man I feel I should be able to say this without you throwing me in a pile with an infinitely small group of Stein/Greenwald/Putin aficionados. Sometime in the past 60 plus years I think I've earned that.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

57. The way you have articulated your criticism is not at all

What I was referring to.

[Uponthegears]

61. I was hoping not

I remember how pissed I was when you were getting stalked by the crazies. I should have known you wouldn't have meant everyone.

Take care LLP

[La Lioness Priyanka]

62. I def don't. Saying I'm disappointed in XYZ dem

Because of xyz action, is perfectly legit.

Calling dem leaders who are doing some real good work, neoliberal sell out etc, is what I am talking about

[betsuni]

63. Yesterday I saw an OP that was pretty much just a headline about Booker being bad.

And a whole thread throwing meaningless alt-left vocabulary words at him. All negativity, no discussion. I went over to Jezebel where there were informative and interesting discussions about Booker (and about Sessions).

Every time I see "neoliberal" flung at a Democrat, I think: how neostupid.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

64. Neostupid, is a fab term

[JHan]

66. "neo-stupid"... that wins.

[forjusticethunders]

67. The problem is the welfare chauvinist alt-left have SO POISONED the discussion

that we have no choice but to circle the wagons. I personally didn't like Booker's vote, but I already knew that he was nowhere near as left as I want him to be. But any discussion over the merits of a specific position just takes over the alt left screaming slogans and half-truths at people.