Sanders is starting to bore holes in Clinton’s racial “firewall.”
Here’s an endorsement from the daughter of Eric Garner, the NYC man who was killed by a policeman using a chokehold.
A black state senator in Georgia endorsed him.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/hillary-clinton-endorsement-swap-bernie-sanders-219321
So has former NAACP President Ben Jealous.
Drops in the bucket. Hillary’s got this.
[pedant]Please, it’s “rein in”, not “reign in”.[\pedant]
Actually they didn’t say that. They (correctly) said that Gerald Friedman’s analysis of the plan didn’t add up. They didn’t comment on the plan itself. It’s an open letter so I’ll quote from it:
[QUOTE= Krueger, Goolsbee, Tyson, Romer]
We are concerned to see the Sanders campaign citing extreme claims by Gerald Friedman about the effect of Senator Sanders’s economic plan—claims that cannot be supported by the economic evidence. Friedman asserts that your plan will have huge beneficial impacts on growth rates, income and employment that exceed even the most grandiose predictions by Republicans about the impact of their tax cut proposals.
As much as we wish it were so, no credible economic research supports economic impacts of these magnitudes. Making such promises runs against our party’s best traditions of evidence-based policy making and undermines our reputation as the party of responsible arithmetic. These claims undermine the credibility of the progressive economic agenda and make it that much more difficult to challenge the unrealistic claims made by Republican candidates.
[/QUOTE]
Ok, so the Sanders campaign cited the bogus study. It didn’t sponsor it though and it’s not like Sanders himself has even mentioned it in passing. It is very much in the interest of mainstream Democratic wonks to nip this in the bud. But for Sanders, it’s merely something to walk back a little.
Hey Qin! I’ve got a real question. When conservatives throw the word “Socialist” around, they are using the word to smear leftie proposals with insinuations of communism and therefore foreign influences at best and disloyalty to America at worst. It’s a cold war thing. But it’s all a little dated. Here’s my question. For folks your age (not you - you’re pretty well read) what does the word “Socialist” imply? What’s the baggage associated with the word? What about “Communist”? “Far left?” I’m wondering how the Republicans will have to update their bag of tricks over the next 30 years or so.
Maybe in theory. In reality, are there any countries with universal health coverage in which it is easier to start a business than it is in America? As far as I understand it, the opposite is true, due to all of the extra taxes, licenses, insurance, regulation, bureaucracy, ect that goes hand in hand with those types of governments.
It sure is good we don’t have onerous regulations here then.
Let’s consider the socialist hell-holes of Singapore, New Zealand, and Denmark. Singapore has universal health care and spends 3% of GDP on that sector, as compared with 18% for the US. Singapore ranks number 1 worldwide in ease of doing business and number 10 in terms of starting a business.
Eh. That’s a city-state. Let’s move on. New Zealand is ranked #2 in terms of doing business and #1 in terms of starting a business. Denmark is 3 and 29.
The US is (drumroll), ranked 7 in terms of doing business and… 49 in terms of starting a business. Oh well.
http://www.doingbusiness.org/rankings
Once again, facts trump ideological preconceptions.
Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, publishes their Index of Economic Freedom each year. The Index measures a variety of benchmarks they associate witheconomic freedom:
Here is the top ten:
[ol]
[li]Hong Kong[/li][li]Singapore[/li][li]New Zealand [/li][li]Switzerland[/li][li]Australia[/li][li]Canada [/li][li]Chile[/li][li]Ireland[/li][li]Estonia[/li][li]United Kingdom[/li][/ol]
Where is the US? Why is it less economically free than Estonia?
Notice anything else? They all have socialized medicine. They all have subsidized higher education. They invest in their citizens.
You have been misinformed. The US is the eleventh most economically free nation in the world. Perhaps we can learn something from the ten who do it better than we do.
Though 11 out of 166 ranked countries isn’t bad! There’s lots of opportunity in the US. Also in Chile, Switzerland, Sweden and the UK for those with the right sort of temperament. It’s just that using conservative ideology as a foundation for understanding the world steers you wrong, wildly wrong, embarrassingly wrong.
Far better better to be empirical, fact-gathering and pragmatic. Ideologies—no matter what they are—are bad masters.
Well, looks like I’ll have to do the walking back. The Sanders policy director cited the Friedman analysis at least 3 times. And he apparently has doubled down a little, telling NPR that the letter of the 4 former Chairs of Council of Economic Advisers, “Does not bother us at all.” Indeed, Matt Yglassias draws a parallel between Bernie and modern conservatism, as I did above: [INDENT]Sanders is running a style of campaign that’s very unusual for a prominent Democrat but extremely common for a Republican. Marco Rubio, for example, has proposed a large tax cut, a balanced budget amendment, an increase in defense spending, and to prevent any cuts in Social Security or Medicare for people currently at or near retirement.
This is, obviously, not possible, but it hasn’t been a problem for Rubio in the GOP primary because the 2016 GOP primary — like the 2012, 2008, 2000, 1996, and 1988 primaries — haven’t been about who has the best policy plans. It is about how conservative ideology should be defined and — among those who share a similar definition — who is its most effective champion. The 1980 and 1976 GOP primaries were about whether the Republican Party should be a vehicle of the conservative movement or whether it should continue in the Eisenhower/Nixon/Ford model of right-leaning interest group brokerage — with the conservatives winning in 1980 and never letting go. [/INDENT] Top Democratic economists don't think much of Bernienomics. He doesn’t care. | Vox
So I have to back peddle - Bernie’s policy director has indeed doubled down on the crazy analysis but so far that’s all. Whether the Sanders campaign will de-emphasize this dubious outside study moving forward remains to be seen.
Shaun King endorsed Bernie.
Ta-Nehisi Coates and Michelle Alexander have both decided to support Bernie as (damning with faint praise) a “lesser evil.” Which, you know, sounds a lot like Bayard Rustin saying, “Both parties stink! They do! But…” And that’s the variety of ringing (e_e) endorsement that has kept most blacks out of the GOP and voting Democrat for generations.
And did I mention that Shaun King endorsed Bernie.
You’re probably going to see a generational divide among blacks as among whites. It might not be as pronounced.
I for one am gratified to see a leftie learning from Republican success. Paul Krugman himself has noted that there is a constituency that want to be lied to.
The Bushes lied on fiscal matters, and Reagan lied on fiscal matters; people didn’t know the difference; and the liars were very popular. If lying–or overoptimistic economic projections–is what sells, maybe Bernie is just being strategic.
I have mixed feelings. It’s annoying when politicians talk nonsense. But despite that, I am impressed with the sheer common sense of doing what works in an election.
Shaun King? You mean the guy who is so white, they gave him an Oscar on Twitter for playing black? Lol
Hillary just got endorsed by Jim Clyburn. I think that might carry slightly greater weight.
“Shaun King” – who?
“Jim Clyburn” – who?
I don’t think Sanders voters see it that way, nor do conservative voters. We all know that the promises aren’t all possible, so you have to figure out what the top priorities will be, because that’s what’ll get done. The only problem in that respect with both Sanders and Rubio is that I’m not sure what they will decide to prioritize. With Sanders, I think it’ll be his free college, since the funding mechanism is the most sound and the easiest to pass.
But having an argument over what it means to be a conservative or a liberal is definitely a legitimate thing to campaign over. And to liberals’ credit, most of them don’t believe for a second that Sanders can deliver on his plans. That’s not really the point anyway. Electing Sanders isn’t about getting all that implemented, it’s about electing a true blue liberal and changing the conversation.
Coates did not endorse Bernie. He did say he would vote for him, but he has written that this was not an endorsement because he is not qualified to judge lots of areas, like foreign policy.
Not sure that affects the points raised above. But it was a refreshing thing for him to write, in my view, and worth clarifying.
The dishonesty, from supply-siders on the right and from Bernie on the left, is not about whether they can get their plans passed, but about what the effects would be if they did. Specifically, how they would allegedly not blow a hole in the budget. Both sides rely on extreme expectations of economic growth and wildly unrealistic assumptions about cost cutting.
OK, maybe I have been too diplomatic about the Congressional Black Caucus, because you are still not getting it.
Hillary Clinton isn’t just endorsed by black Democratic politicians. She’s endorsed by Democratic politicians who are loyal to the party and its machine. They choose Queen Hillary over an outsider, an independent, an alleged self-righteous rabble-rouser like Bernie Sanders. They choose her for “political” and careerist reasons, not policy reasons. They aren’t endorsing her out of some intrinsic black affinity for Hillary; any more than John Hickenlooper, to pick an arbitrary name, is endorsing her out of some intrinsic white affinity for her.
I think, without adding it up, that among national-level pols, HRC has been endorsed by a greater proportion of white Dem politicians than her proportion of black Dem politicians. Apparently white people* love* Hillary! …if you only look at elected Democratic politicians and TV comedians (and Al Franken, who is both :p).
And yet, even among whites, even among white women, Bernie is getting the turnout from the young, the poor, the people that are supposedly Democratic Party constituents. Even with the machine on her side, she’s fighting for the nomination and might lose.
Now, the Black Caucus, they are often referred to as a bunch of “nest-featherers.” They’re not exactly the most inspiring bunch. They are part of the machine, just like all those white Congressmen who endorsed Hillary. And young blacks might not care that much what they say. That does not mean that young blacks will turn out to vote for Bernie. More likely, they’re completely disgusted with this stupid racist country and won’t turn out at all.
But if Shaun King and Erica Garner say,* this guy is on our side, he gets it,* and if BLM mobilizes young people, then Bernie has a chance with the youth vote. Just as on the white side of the color line.
It is uphill for him. Probably more for latinos than for blacks. But Bernie’s appeal is to youth and the poor. The really hard part is getting young poor blacks to even show up at the polls. If Bernie loses (and he still looks like he will) it will be for lack of ground mobilization in that disaffected demographic, not some imagined great racial love for HRC that honestly, has no reason to exist.
Maybe look at Shaun King’s interview with Ohio state senator Nina Turner back in November 2015:
And here’s Shaun King’s endorsement of Bernie Sanders, in much stronger positive language than the mostly anti-Hillary words of Ta-Nehisi Coates or Michelle Alexander:
This race is Bernie’s to win or lose. If he fails to capitalize on his existing support from the anti-police brutality/BLM movement, if he can’t get the volunteers on the ground, he likely will come up short. But the potential is there.
Now, there is a grim truth unspoken so far. Lots of black men in this country are disenfranchised, and *can’t *vote–maybe especially the under-50 set that are Bernie’s (& BLM’s) ostensible base. But their relatives can. And Bernie doesn’t have to win blacks over outright, just get close, if he starts expanding his support among white voters.
ETA: And calling Shaun King a white guy pretending to be black is not only silly & insulting, but wildly missing the point about who he is and what he has done in this country.
No, you are the one who is not getting it. I am a political hack. I know the CBC is a political machine. I love the machine. I delight in seeing the machine grind under its giant tank treads the starry-eyed hopes of a bunch of silly idealists. I further delight in knowing that when Bernheads attack the CBC as being part of the establishment machine, the fact that they are right does not do them any favors with black voters.
IOW, mwahahahh, resistance is futile, etc.
Well, among African-Americans, it seems that every African-American not connected with the Democratic machine has endorsed Bernie, and all those with the political machine have endorsed Clinton.
Right, the ones that matter.