2016 Bernie Sanders (D-VT) campaign for POTUS thread

[John_Stamos_Left_Ear]

@Shodan

One is a wild-eyed radical, badly out of touch with everything the American republic stands for. The other is from Vermont.

I realize that you think you’re being funny, but it would help to be factually accurate with your barbs: She’s a centrist whose voting record Idealogy Score is closer to that of centrist Republicans Snowe and Collins and former GOP Vice Presidential candidate Joe Lieberman than Sanders and falling right in the middle of the Democratic cluster. Calling someone who is center-left in a country that is center-left on the issues out of touch and a “radical” shows that you’re a lot more out of touch than she is.

[ElvisL1ves]

For some, that’s simply what “Democratic candidate” means.

[Chronos]

…former GOP Vice Presidential candidate Joe Lieberman

Finally, we have something to hold up against Fox’s scandal-ridden “Democrats” as evidence that “both sides do it”.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Shodan

One is a wild-eyed radical, badly out of touch with everything the American republic stands for. The other is from Vermont.

This construction works better when comparing Rush Limbaugh to the Hindenburg–only one of which is a flaming Nazi gasbag, the other being a dirigible. Here, though, it doesn’t really work.

[adaher]

@John_Stamos_Left_Ear

I realize that you think you’re being funny, but it would help to be factually accurate with your barbs: She’s a centrist whose voting record Idealogy Score is closer to that of centrist Republicans Snowe and Collins and former GOP Vice Presidential candidate Joe Lieberman than Sanders and falling right in the middle of the Democratic cluster. Calling someone who is center-left in a country that is center-left on the issues out of touch and a “radical” shows that you’re a lot more out of touch than she is.

Okay, so Clinton is closer to the Mark Pryor wing of the party than the Barbara Boxer wing?

[John_Stamos_Left_Ear]

@ElvisL1ves

For some, that’s simply what “Democratic candidate” means.

And I know you’re kidding as well but I would counter that the Democratic candidate for President has received more votes then their Republican counterpart in five of the last six elections.

[kaylasdad99]

@Shodan

One is a wild-eyed radical, badly out of touch with everything the American republic stands for. The other is from Vermont.

Regards,
Shodan

Very droll, but the post you quoted was about Sanders v HRC, not Sanders v, well, just about any Republican you’d care to name.

[BrainGlutton]

Some (fairly recent) historical perspective: Michael Harrington came this close to announcing his presidential candidacy in 1978.

[Shodan]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

This construction works better when comparing Rush Limbaugh to the Hindenburg–only one of which is a flaming Nazi gasbag, the other being a dirigible. Here, though, it doesn’t really work.

No, it works quite well as I did it. I can tell because you don’t like it.

Regards,
Shodan

[John_Stamos_Left_Ear]

Oh snap! A variant of the “I’m rubber you’re glue” defense. Well played.

[BrainGlutton]

@adaher

Bernie Sanders=Ron Paul. He’ll raise money and have a dedicated fan base, but he’s not winning the nomination. He’s old and an ideological kook.

@BrainGlutton

Please specify what’s kooky about his politics.

I repeat.

[BrainGlutton]

@John_Stamos_Left_Ear

Also, Sanders isn’t a Socialist. He is a Democratic Socialist.

Not really. He’s a social democrat, what in the U.S. is called a progressive.

Democratic socialism is something like George Orwell described in The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius (1941); it is, in fact, the one political-economic system conceived of that has never yet been tried, unless you count the short-lived experiment in Chile under Allende. (Venezuela may be getting there, if only it could pay more scrupulous attention to the “democratic” part; still, there can be no doubt that the present government’s policies do represent the preference of the majority, roughly if not in fine detail.)

Part II: Shopkeepers at War:

What this war has demonstrated is that private capitalism – that is, an economic system in which land, factories, mines and transport are owned privately and operated solely for profit – does not work. It cannot deliver the goods. This fact had been known to millions of people for years past, but nothing ever came of it, because there was no real urge from below to alter the system, and those at the top had trained themselves to be impenetrably stupid on just this point. Argument and propaganda got one nowhere. The lords of property simply sat on their bottoms and proclaimed that all was for the best. Hitler’s conquest of Europe, however, was a physical debunking of capitalism. War, for all its evil, is at any rate an unanswerable test of strength, like a try-your-grip machine. Great strength returns the penny, and there is no way of faking the result.

When the nautical screw was first invented, there was a controversy that lasted for years as to whether screw-steamers or paddle-steamers were better. The paddle-steamers, like all obsolete things, had their champions, who supported them by ingenious arguments. Finally, however, a distinguished admiral tied a screw-steamer and a paddle-steamer of equal horsepower stern to stern and set their engines running. That settled the question once and for all. And it was something similar that happened on the fields of Norway and of Flanders. Once and for all it was proved that a planned economy is stronger than a planless one. But it is necessary here to give some kind of definition to those much-abused words, Socialism and Fascism.

Socialism is usually defined as ‘common ownership of the means of production’. Crudely: the State, representing the whole nation, owns everything, and everyone is a State employee. This does not mean that people are stripped of private possessions such as clothes and furniture, but it does mean that all productive goods, such as land, mines, ships and machinery, are the property of the State. The State is the sole large-scale producer. It is not certain that Socialism is in all ways superior to capitalism, but it is certain that, unlike capitalism, it can solve the problems of production and consumption. At normal times a capitalist economy can never consume all that it produces, so that there is always a wasted surplus (wheat burned in furnaces, herrings dumped back into the sea etc. etc.) and always unemployment. In time of war, on the other hand, it has difficulty in producing all that it needs, because nothing is produced unless someone sees his way to making a profit out of it.

In a Socialist economy these problems do not exist. The State simply calculates what goods will be needed and does its best to produce them. Production is only limited by the amount of labour and raw materials. Money, for internal purposes, ceases to be a mysterious all-powerful thing and becomes a sort of coupon or ration-ticket, issued in sufficient quantities to buy up such consumption goods as may be available at the moment.

However, it has become clear in the last few years that ‘common ownership of the means of production’ is not in itself a sufficient definition of Socialism. One must also add the following: approximate equality of incomes (it need be no more than approximate), political democracy, and abolition of all hereditary privilege, especially in education. These are simply the necessary safeguards against the reappearance of a class-system. Centralized ownership has very little meaning unless the mass of the people are living roughly upon an equal level, and have some kind of control over the government. ‘The State’ may come to mean no more than a self-elected political party, and oligarchy and privilege can return, based on power rather than on money.

Part III: The English Revolution:

I suggest that the following six-point programme is the kind of thing we need. The first three points deal with England’s internal policy, the other three with the Empire and the world:
1.Nationalization of land, mines, railways, banks and major industries.
2.Limitation of incomes, on such a scale that the highest tax-free income in Britain does not exceed the lowest by more than ten to one.
3.Reform of the educational system along democratic lines.
4.Immediate Dominion status for India, with power to secede when the war is over.
5.Formation of an Imperial General Council, in which the coloured peoples are to be represented.
6.Declaration of formal alliance with China, Abyssinia and all other victims of the Fascist powers.

The general tendency of this programme is unmistakable. It aims quite frankly at turning this war into a revolutionary war and England into a Socialist democracy. I have deliberately included in it nothing that the simplest person could not understand and see the reason for. In the form in which I have put it, it could be printed on the front page of the Daily Mirror. But for the purposes of this book a certain amount of amplification is needed.

1. Nationalization. One can ‘nationalize’ industry by the stroke of a pen, but the actual process is slow and complicated. What is needed is that the ownership of all major industry shall be formally vested in the State, representing the common people. Once that is done it becomes possible to eliminate the class of mere owners who live not by virtue of anything they produce but by the possession of title-deeds and share certificates. State-ownership implies, therefore, that nobody shall live without working. How sudden a change in the conduct of industry it implies is less certain. In a country like England we cannot rip down the whole structure and build again from the bottom, least of all in time of war. Inevitably the majority of industrial concerns will continue with much the same personnel as before, the one-time owners or managing directors carrying on with their jobs as State employees. There is reason to think that many of the smaller capitalists would actually welcome some such arrangement. The resistance will come from the big capitalists, the bankers, the landlords and the idle rich, roughly speaking the class with over £2,000 a year – and even if one counts in all their dependants there are not more than half a million of these people in England. Nationalization of agricultural land implies cutting out the landlord and the tithe drawer, but not necessarily interfering with the farmer. It is difficult to imagine any reorganization of English agriculture that would not retain most of the existing farms as units, at any rate at the beginning. The farmer, when he is competent, will continue as a salaried manager. He is virtually that already, with the added disadvantage of having to make a profit and being permanently in debt to the bank. With certain kinds of petty trading, and even the small-scale ownership of land, the State will probably not interfere at all. It would be a great mistake to start by victimizing the smallholder class, for instance. These people are necessary, on the whole they are competent, and the amount of work they do depends on the feeling that they are ‘their own masters’. But the State will certainly impose an upward limit to the ownership of land (probably fifteen acres at the very most), and will never permit any ownership of land in town areas.

From the moment that all productive goods have been declared the property of the State, the common people will feel, as they cannot feel now, that the State is themselves. They will be ready then to endure the sacrifices that are ahead of us, war or no war. And even if the face of England hardly seems to change, on the day that our main industries are formally nationalized the dominance of a single class will have been broken. From then onwards the emphasis will be shifted from ownership to management, from privilege to competence. It is quite possible that State-ownership will in itself bring about less social change than will be forced upon us by the common hardships of war. But it is the necessary first step without any real reconstruction is impossible.

2. Incomes. Limitation of incomes implies the fixing of a minimum wage, which implies a managed internal currency based simply on the amount of consumption goods available. And this again implies a stricter rationing scheme than is now in operation. It is no use at this stage of the world’s history to suggest that all human beings should have exactly equal incomes. It has been shown over and over again that without some kind of money reward there is no incentive to undertake certain jobs. On the other hand the money reward need not be very large. In practice it is impossible that earnings should be limited quite as rigidly as I have suggested. There will always be anomalies and evasions. But there is no reason why ten to one should not be the maximum normal variation. And within those limits some sense of equality is possible. A man with Ј3 a week and a man with £1,500 a year can feel themselves fellow creatures, which the Duke of Westminster and the sleepers on the Embankment benches cannot.

Nothing Sanders has endorsed, AFAIK, goes nearly so far as all of that.

[John_Stamos_Left_Ear]

@BrainGlutton

Not really. He’s a social democrat, what in the U.S. is called a progressive.

Bernie calls himself a Democratic Socialist. So I suggest you take it up with him.

[BrainGlutton]

@John_Stamos_Left_Ear

Bernie calls himself a Democratic Socialist. So I suggest you take it up with him.

Then he needlessly devalues the name. Entirely regardless of whether the democratic socialism Orwell describes could work in the real world the way he hoped it would, it is very definitely a thing the American Overton Window should be pushed far enough leftward at least to encompass as a matter for serious discussion, and giving social democracy the name of “democratic socialism” ain’t helpin’ in that regard.

[John_Stamos_Left_Ear]

@BrainGlutton

Then he needlessly devalues the name.

You should also take it up with the Democratic Socialists of America who endorse Bernie.

It could be that your definition is far more rigid than it is in practice if both Sanders and the DSA feel that he fits the bill.

[JackieLikesVariety]

do we have to argue what words we can use to describe Bernie Sanders? what about talking about his IDEAS? because they are good ones.

“socialist” ideas? mainstream appeal!

as he has said: THIS is why he is running, to get people talking about what the country actually needs.

[John_Stamos_Left_Ear]

It’s not just pedancy though. This is a country where a healthy majority of likely voters in the last Presidential election thought that Obama was a Socialist.

He is clearly not a Socialist, but the fact that he was considered one by so many Americans has to impact the candidacy of someone who is called a Socialist by nearly everyone and who, in response, will correct those people - by saying he is a Democratic Socialist, which still has the dreaded S-word right in it.

Although I doubt they’ll be calling Sanders a Kenyan Muslim, so he has that going for him at least.

[ITR_champion]

@JackieLikesVariety

what about talking about his IDEAS?

Ok. For starters, he has–or at least once had–some strange ideas about rape and gender roles.

[Snowboarder_Bo]

@ITR_champion

Ok. For starters, he has–or at least once had–some strange ideas about rape and gender roles.

Like what? I notice that you use the plural “ideas”, so maybe you could talk about a couple of Mr. Sander’s ideas about rape and gender roles that you think are “strange”.

[Bryan_Ekers]

@Shodan

No, it works quite well as I did it. I can tell because you don’t like it.

So was the negative reaction the goal, or just evidence that the goal was reached?