# Bernie Sanders to give his own State of the Union response **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [January 29, 2018, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernie-sanders-to-give-his-own-state-of-the-union-response/807758 "2018-01-29T20:01:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernie-sanders-to-give-his-own-state-of-the-union-response/807758/41 "2018-01-30T14:23:29Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > You’re missing the point - this is what the Dems are offering as alternatives to Trump. A commie, a fruitcake, and a tyro with a gaudy name. This is the best you can do? > > Regards, > Shodan As noted, the Democrats are “offering” Kennedy. The others are speaking at their own behest, as anyone can. You could also offer a rebuttal and put it on youtube. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernie-sanders-to-give-his-own-state-of-the-union-response/807758/42 "2018-01-30T15:50:35Z")
> [@Johnny\_Ace](#): > > Wrong, bub. I hate bullshit. Especially ignorant bullshit. That’s enough of the personal cracks from everybody. I need you guys to throttle it down from an 8 to about a 5. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernie-sanders-to-give-his-own-state-of-the-union-response/807758/43 "2018-01-30T18:19:08Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > And one of the options is Bernie Sanders, and another Maxine Waters. The extreme left, and La-La Land. And the official option is a politician who got into office because of his name, after losing the election with a candidate who got the nomination because of her name. Does it bother you that there are armies of paid internet entities now that do what you’ve done for free all your life? It must be weird having done all this vigilant lifting to move the Overton window, and no one ever gave you anything for it, a free life time of service. That would bug me. I wonder if the thought ever crosses your mind - if Bernie constitutes the “looney extreme left” - how do all those countries that are happier, safer, saner, more co-operative, and better governed than the US - like the Netherlands as an example - function? Their mainstream politicians are left of the SUPER LOONEY EXTREMIST MOST LEFT EVER Bernie Sanders, and yet their countries are well-run by any metric, with people having faith in their government, low corruption, and a happy populace? Does it ever cross your mind, even for an instant? Or is it like the single payer healthcare thing that far better than the US system in every other first world country, and has for decades, but you have to pretend that it’s some sort of radical new untested idea that couldn’t possibly work? ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernie-sanders-to-give-his-own-state-of-the-union-response/807758/44 "2018-01-30T19:14:50Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > Does it bother you that there are armies of paid internet entities now that do what you’ve done for free all your life? It must be weird having done all this vigilant lifting to move the Overton window, and no one ever gave you anything for it, a free life time of service. That would bug me. Far from doing it for free, I had to pay $7.98 a year for my Charter Membership. But I’m not in it for the money. > [@](#): > > I wonder if the thought ever crosses your mind - if Bernie constitutes the “looney extreme left” - how do all those countries that are happier, safer, saner, more co-operative, and better governed than the US - like the Netherlands as an example - function? Their mainstream politicians are left of the SUPER LOONEY EXTREMIST MOST LEFT EVER Bernie Sanders, and yet their countries are well-run by any metric, with people having faith in their government, low corruption, and a happy populace? If a candidate comes forward with an economic plan that will kill 6 million jobs, increase the national debt by tens of trillions of dollars, reduce after-tax income for all socio-economic groups, including the lowest, and come up [$17 trillion short](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/05/09/the-17-trillion-problem-with-bernie-sanderss-health-care-plan-2/?utm_term=.ccbbd81fba4f) on paying for health care, I tend not to be persuaded by the idea that the Dutch want it. But I’m funny that way. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernie-sanders-to-give-his-own-state-of-the-union-response/807758/45 "2018-01-30T19:33:52Z")
That article is a silly hit job. It counts taxes for a single payer system but then doesn’t subtract the value that we’d be saving on medicare or Medicaid or private insurance. Well no shit the numbers look bad then, you’re dishonestly engineering the numbers to look bad. If, hypothetically, we paid $1 trillion per year for health care now, and Bernie proposed a system that would instead pay $800 billion, they’d be saying “OMG $800 BILLION IN NEW TAXES! WE CAN’T AFFORD THAT!” while ignoring the fact that we’re no longer spending the $1 trillion on the programs this superscedes. If you can’t attack your opponent’s positions with honestly, your position probably sucks. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernie-sanders-to-give-his-own-state-of-the-union-response/807758/46 "2018-01-30T19:54:43Z")
I don’t know what you mean by “subtracting the value we’d be saving”, but Bernie’s idea was single payer - [Medicare for all.](https://berniesanders.com/issues/medicare-for-all/) Spending less on Medicare doesn’t help if you spend more than that but call it something else. Amount Bernie wanted the government to spend on healthcare = X. Amount Bernie proposed in new taxes = Y. X - Y = 17 trillion. That’s according to those well-known right wing stooges the Urban Institute, the Tax Policy Center, and the Washington Post. Of course Kenneth Thorpe, professor of health policy at Emory University and former member of the Clinton administration, estimated the shortfall at $25 trillion, but what’s eight trillion dollars among friends? But hey, at least we wouldn’t be paralyzed by the number of deodorants to choose from. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernie-sanders-to-give-his-own-state-of-the-union-response/807758/47 "2018-01-30T20:00:07Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > I don’t know what you mean by “subtracting the value we’d be saving” Subtracting that part of the cost of insurance premiums in the current that does not go into making people healthier. Which is a helluva lot, but does not appear in your formulation. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernie-sanders-to-give-his-own-state-of-the-union-response/807758/48 "2018-01-30T20:02:40Z")
Medicare is not medicaid. Medicare is not private spending on insurance. Medicare is not the mish mash of tax subsidies and state programs and employer incentives and all the other complex shit that goes into making our health care payment system convoluted. If, hypothetically, the average American spends $8000 a year on medical costs through insurance and out of pocket costs, but we came up with a more efficient system like literally the rest of the first world nad some of the third world, so that the average American would spend $5000 on health care, that’s a savings of $3000 per American per year. So how would you scare people away from such a proposal that obviously benefits them? You’d say "OMG! He wants $5000 per American per year of new spending on this new system! That’s 320m \* $5000. That’s $1.6 trillion in new spending! Over 20 years, that’s 32 trillion dollars! Bernie wants to pull 32 trillion dollars out of nowhere! His ideas are wild and impractical!!! Except that this hypothetical proposal actually saves $3000 per person per year. But hey, if you only count the illusory “new” cost, and fail to take into account the money that’s being saved by this change to our system, then you can lie up whatever bill you want and call it pie in the sky. You turn a real world saving of trillions of dollars into “OMG WILD IMPRACTICAL SPENDING COMMUNISM!!!” and all it takes is some dishonesty and ignorance peddling. Meanwhile every other rich country in the world has been doing it for decades and thinks we’re insane and stupid while we scream about how such a system could never possibly work. ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernie-sanders-to-give-his-own-state-of-the-union-response/807758/49 "2018-01-30T20:15:38Z")
Puh-leeze, Shodan. Dislike Sanders if you want, but he is no “commie”. Fox has been going on the air arguing against Stalinist totalitarianism and calling that the American left for so long that some of you guys can’t make basic distinctions anymore :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernie-sanders-to-give-his-own-state-of-the-union-response/807758/50 "2018-01-30T20:40:21Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > We wouldn’t want Americans to know there are other options and lines of thought than center-right and extreme-right. The horror. What a surprise that another one of these comes from Dale. > > Bernie didn’t do shit to cost Hillary the election. It’s not like he told people to write him in or stay home and not vote or anything - he was out there unambiguously screaming that people needed to defeat Trump and vote for Hillary from the moment she had the nomination. He was one of Hillary’s biggest cheerleaders. So how did he do all this supposed damage? By showing Americans that there were people out there that actually spent their lives genuinely trying to serve the public and not their corporate sponsors? The horror. We definitely need to get rid of that. > > . I think you’re wrong. Bernie was a despicable jerk. Ok, he wanted to run his failed campaign all the way through every primary and caucus, even though he was all but mathematically eliminated after the New York primary when he was crushed. But that wasn’t enough for St. Bernard. Even after Clinton had enough delegates after the California primary, Bernie continued to pout and promised to, ‘Take it to the convention.’ He did nothing to try to shut down all the idiotic conspiracy theories being thrown around by his Bernie Bots. He appointed Cornel West to the platform committee who then promptly endorsed Jill Stein. How many votes did Clinton lose because of naive Bernie Bros in Madison, State College, and Ann Arbor? If Sanders would have dropped out earlier, that would have poured water on the Bern and there wouldn’t have been as many people staying home, voting 3rd party, or writing in Bernie in crucial states. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernie-sanders-to-give-his-own-state-of-the-union-response/807758/51 "2018-01-30T20:50:20Z")
> [@dalej42](#): > > I think you’re wrong. Bernie was a despicable jerk. Ok, he wanted to run his failed campaign all the way through every primary and caucus, even though he was all but mathematically eliminated after the New York primary when he was crushed. Again: he was very clear that he was running in order to get progressive causes to be part of the conversation. He succeeded in that aim. Your claim–that he cost Clinton votes–is totally unfounded, and to the extent that it’s true, suggests that she couldn’t stand up under criticism of her positions. You are far more interested in Sanders, at this point, than just about anyone else. Consider letting 2016 go. ---
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernie-sanders-to-give-his-own-state-of-the-union-response/807758/52 "2018-01-30T20:55:59Z")
I can’t ignore Sanders because I don’t think the dangers from him are over. I can ignore gadflies like Dennis Kucinich since they didn’t do any real damage. If the SDMB would have been around in 1990, I would not have been ignoring Jesse Jackson since he could have hurt the Democrats in 1992 like he did in 1988. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernie-sanders-to-give-his-own-state-of-the-union-response/807758/53 "2018-01-30T20:57:18Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Your claim–that he cost Clinton votes–is totally unfounded, and to the extent that it’s true Um, say again? ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernie-sanders-to-give-his-own-state-of-the-union-response/807758/54 "2018-01-30T21:03:07Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Again: he was very clear that he was running in order to get progressive causes to be part of the conversation. Then why did he spend so much time pushing the Putin/Trump narrative on Hillary (and Bill as well)? Bernie did as much as the Russian bots to sell the idea that ‘the Clintons are corrupt and crooked’–maybe more. If that time had been spent, instead, on actually selling progressive causes (instead of on hammering home the idea that Hillary was an awful person), then many of those who deplore his role in the November 8 outcome would have a very different view of him. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernie-sanders-to-give-his-own-state-of-the-union-response/807758/55 "2018-01-30T21:03:59Z")
> [@dalej42](#): > > I think you’re wrong. Bernie was a despicable jerk. Ok, he wanted to run his failed campaign all the way through every primary and caucus, even though he was all but mathematically eliminated after the New York primary when he was crushed. But that wasn’t enough for St. Bernard. Even after Clinton had enough delegates after the California primary, Bernie continued to pout and promised to, ‘Take it to the convention.’ He did nothing to try to shut down all the idiotic conspiracy theories being thrown around by his Bernie Bots. He appointed Cornel West to the platform committee who then promptly endorsed Jill Stein. Clinton didn’t become the “presumptive nominee” until the day before the CA primary in June. The NY primary was in mid April. And Bernie said he’d vote for her in the general, and did endorse her before the convention. Bernie did nothing substantively different in 2016 than HRC did in 2008. Politics is a rough game, and if Her Inevitableness couldn’t handle it, she should have dropped out herself. But she eventually won the nomination and promptly proceed to lose the election. That is not to say that I think Bernie would have won the election. I doubt he would have, but we’ll never know. We only know that Hillary ran and lost. At any rate, it’s good to finally have a thread where we can discuss this whole thing. I can’t believe we’ve never done this before! (And that’s my last contribution to this hijack of the thread.) ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernie-sanders-to-give-his-own-state-of-the-union-response/807758/56 "2018-01-30T21:11:49Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > Um, say again? No thanks! > [@dalej42](#): > > I can’t ignore Sanders because I don’t think the dangers from him are over. I can ignore gadflies like Dennis Kucinich since they didn’t do any real damage. If the SDMB would have been around in 1990, I would not have been ignoring Jesse Jackson since he could have hurt the Democrats in 1992 like he did in 1988. What you see as “real damage” is unclear. > [@Sherrerd](#): > > Then why did he spend so much time pushing the Putin/Trump narrative on Hillary (and Bill as well)? > > Bernie did as much as the Russian bots to sell the idea that ‘the Clintons are corrupt and crooked’–maybe more. The Clintons ARE corrupt and crooked, I mean, my god, I’ve been watching them since 1992, and neither Bill nor Hillary sees much point to telling the truth about their own dealings, whether it’s who they have sexual relationships with or whether they were under fire in Serbia or whether they know how to wipe a server. While their aims are decent for moderate Democrats, they’re big believers in the sausage-making process of politics. Saying that it’s the “Trump/Putin narrative” to call them crooked is as foolish as saying it’s the Trump/Putin narrative to call [Sanders Crazy](http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/11/politics/donald-trump-crazy-bernie-sanders/index.html). > [@](#): > > If that time had been spent, instead, on actually selling progressive causes (instead of on hammering home the idea that Hillary was an awful person), then many of those who deplore his role in the November 8 outcome would have a very different view of him. Did you ever watch an interview with him? Dude was a broken goddamn record on his issues, it was very nearly a joke how closely he stuck to his script about what he believed in. On a rare occasion he talked about disliking Clinton’s miasma of corruption, but just as often he angrily dismissed leading questions about the subject (“Sick and tired of hearing about the damn emails”). People who keep fighting Sanders are doing a terrible disservice to the progressive cause. Unless, of course, they’re not progressive, in which case, well fought I suppose. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernie-sanders-to-give-his-own-state-of-the-union-response/807758/57 "2018-01-30T21:12:54Z")
Aha, so there were all these millions of people that would’ve just loved to vote for Clinton, except that Bernie fucked that all up by telling everyone that it was absolutely imperative that they must vote for Clinton. What a weird voting bloc that is. It’s almost as if they make no fucking sense whatsoever and don’t exist. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernie-sanders-to-give-his-own-state-of-the-union-response/807758/58 "2018-01-30T21:20:51Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > Medicare is not medicaid. Medicare is not private spending on insurance. Medicare is not the mish mash of tax subsidies and state programs and employer incentives and all the other complex shit that goes into making our health care payment system convoluted. For heaven’s sake - read the damn article. > [@](#): > > On the whole, Sanders’s plan would require more in new taxes than Americans currently spend on health care. Sanders’s goal is to offer national health insurance that is more generous than many Americans’ current policies, and to extend insurance include the roughly 28 million people who are still uninsured, according to the Urban Institute. See that? More than what we’re spending now. Not less. More. A larger number. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernie-sanders-to-give-his-own-state-of-the-union-response/807758/59 "2018-01-30T21:35:10Z")
And where in that analysis do we subtract the current amount that people are paying for private insurance, states are paying for a hodge podge of medical charities, operating costs of free clinics, etc. to see what the net effect of societal medical spending is? It’s not there, because it’s designed to make it look impractical and expensive. Somehow the entire rest of the rich world has been doing this very thing for decades, with far lower costs and better results than the US, while including every single person in their country in this plan, while not freeing themselves of other deleterious effects like discouraging entrepreneurialship (because people are locked into their current jobs due to healthcare) but in the US we still lie and say that it’s some radically untested wild idea that only communists can dream up and would destroy society. For fucks sake, LITERALLY THE ENTIRE WORLD IS A WORKING MODEL UNAMBIGUOUSLY PROVING THAT THIS WORKS, and you’re treating it like it’s some crazy pie in the sky McDonalds on Pluto plan that only a totally communist nutjob could come up with. But in your world, if health care reformed saved every family $10,000 per year in out of pocket costs but raised their taxes $1, it would be an unworkable crazy communist idea. I’m talking to a guy that called a social democrat a “commie” unironically. What the fuck am I doing? I’m out of this thread. Toodles. ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernie-sanders-to-give-his-own-state-of-the-union-response/807758/60 "2018-01-30T22:07:19Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > … Dude was a broken goddamn record on his issues, it was very nearly a joke how closely he stuck to his script about what he believed in. On a rare occasion he talked about disliking Clinton’s miasma of corruption, but just as often he angrily dismissed leading questions about the subject (“Sick and tired of hearing about the damn emails”). This is either poorly-informed or disingenuous. Sanders attacked Clinton relentlessly, sometimes with remarks that referred to her without naming her, such as: > [@](#): > > The first difference is, I don’t take money from big banks, I don’t get personal speaking fees from Goldman Sachs. > [@](#): > > Can you really reform Wall Street when they are spending millions and millions of dollars on campaign contributions and when they are providing speaker fees to individuals? So it’s easy to say, well, I’m going to do this and do that, but I have doubts when people receive huge amounts of money from Wall Street. > **[Bernie Sanders Attacks Hillary Clinton's Ties to Big Banks](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/01/bernie-sanders-attacks-hillary-clintons-ties-big-banks/)** > > And she shifts the attention to Obama. At other times, he was just as happy to name her: > [@](#): > > Secretary Clinton supported virtually every one of the disastrous trade agreements written by corporate America. [Clinton And Sanders Show Republicans What A Real Debate Looks Like | HuffPost Latest News](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-flint-debate_us_56dcf045e4b0000de4050807) > [@](#): > > Secretary Clinton has given a number of speeches to Wall Street financial institutions for $225,000 a speech. Now, $225,000, that is a lot of money and I kind of figure that if you give a speech for that kind of money it must be a brilliant, earth shattering speech. It must be a speech that will solve all of our global problems. It must be a speech that is written in Shakespearean prose… [https://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-dem-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/05/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-iraq-wall-street-indiana-222764](https://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-dem-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/05/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-iraq-wall-street-indiana-222764) If you can provide us links to a reasonable number of pre-June 2016 (and post-May 2015, when Sanders formally announced his run) Bernie Sanders speeches, in which he talks about progressive causes and spends no time on digs at Clinton, then …I’m sure many readers will be surprised. Sanders wanted to be seen as a More Principled candidate, without a doubt. But, as the Washington Post put it: > [@](#): > > … Politicians are great at saying things without actually saying things — at suggesting something while allowing themselves enough plausible deniability to get out of whatever becomes of it. With that said, we present to you: Bernie Sanders launching a negative ad against Hillary Clinton, without mentioning her. > > It’s clear as day what’s going on here. Sanders doesn’t want to be seen as directly attacking Clinton. It doesn’t fit with his political brand. So instead, he simply mentions the things that have been part of his more-direct attacks on Clinton on the campaign trail … It’s a little like what happened in 2008, when Mike Huckabee bizarrely gathered reporters to show the attack ad on Mitt Romney that his campaign declined to actually run on TV. He didn’t want to run the attack ad, mind you, but he did want to let a bunch of reporters know the content of it. And they took it from there. > > Which is all really a silly political game. Sanders is concerned about looking too much like a typical politician running a negative ad against his opponent. But make no mistake, this ad represents the same brand of political gamesmanship. With this ad, Sanders proves he’s not above the kind of games that are often required when running for president. WP article excerpted at [DVD Talk Forum](https://forum.dvdtalk.com/religion-politics-world-events/606253-2016-presidential-election-thread-its-over-edition-451.html) > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > People who keep fighting Sanders are doing a terrible disservice to the progressive cause. Unless, of course, they’re not progressive, in which case, well fought I suppose. I wish Bernie Sanders were more effective than he is, at promoting progressive causes. He’s okay at preaching to the converted, but that’s about it. That said, I haven’t attacked him for announcing he’ll do a SOTUniom rebuttal; it’s fine with me if he does one. Have at it. I realize that those who feel guilt over their November 2016 choice (and the outcome of Trump) will never get over their need to defend Bernie Sanders and attack Hillary Clinton. Never, never, never. But I do wish y’all would stick to the facts and refrain from making unsupportable claims (such as that ‘Bernie spent all or most of his time promoting progressive causes’). It’s such a waste of time and energy for everyone. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernie-sanders-to-give-his-own-state-of-the-union-response/807758.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernie-sanders-to-give-his-own-state-of-the-union-response/807758.md?page=4)