Bernie Sanders, by all accounts a reasonable man. I myself find it difficult to argue with the things he says.
But what has he done? Seriously, what legislation exists today that wouldn’t if not for Bernie?
Just noting that the Venn diagram of the answers those two questions for any given congressperson might or might not overlap significantly if at all.
Also, have you done any research? I recommend Wikipedia as a decent place to start (sorry if that comes off as a little snarky, but the question as worded implies you know nothing about Sanders, so a quick trip to a reference might help you find what you’re looking for, and give context to the answers to come).
Cool. That fills in lots of blanks.
Sanders’ webpage suggests he has sponsored 1,084 bills.
I do not know that means much though. Who are you comparing him against?
No speaking to Sanders specifically, but the generic long-time Legislator X.
Sponsoring and co-sponsoring are two very different things. A bill popular with the party may attract a raft of co sponsors from that party. Like 20 or 30 or more. All basically tacking their name on as a hearty “Hear here!; I wish to bask in the reflected glory of this legislation I had no hand in shaping. If it passes”. Being a co-sponsor is much more about appearances on the home front than working to craft and pass legislation.
The sponsor OTOH, with their office, may have quite a hand in deciding that [whatever] issue needs addressing, what provisions go into the bill, and being a mover and shaker in glad-handing (or pressuring) to get enough votes to get it through committee, to the floor, and passed.
Bottom line: Big difference in that little bitty “co-”.
Switching to Sanders specifically, he was a rep for 16 years and is a senator for 12 years now. So 28 years so far. 1084 bills divided by 28 years is a very respectable 38 bills per year. That’s not a mere seat-filler who spends all his time campaigning and fund raising. He has been paying attention and attaching his name to a lot of stuff. But what stuff?
Every legislator sponsors a certain amount of feel-good posturing bills. It’s virtue signaling to their constituents. e.g. “Every session I introduce a bill to make it illegal to drive a foreign-made car.” Not gonna pass, but my nice voters in my district in Detroit love that shit.
Sanders, being a bit out on his own wing of the entire Congress, has probably sponsored a good number of what amount to “feel-good posturing.” Not because his ideas about e.g. universal taxpayer-funded health care are intrinsically bad, but because a bill to bring UHC into force has 0.0000% chance of getting out of committee, much less passing.
Traditional politics is all about the ground game, grinding out yards and fractions of a yard with lots of piles of heaving bodies converging at the line of scrimmage to little net effect. Sanders tended to be somebody, much like Freedom Caucus is now, who was content to lob incomplete pass after incomplete pass far downfield where there was no receiver, then claim he was accomplishing something important. If only the rest of his team would stand in the right place. And the opposition would let them.
I think Bernie bears a great amount of credit for the shift in Democratic party politics to supporting higher minimum wage, universal health care, and many other progressive priorities. I believe it was his presidential campaigns that brought the party to those positions. Without Bernie, perhaps some other progressive would have helped the party get to these positions, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve a big part of the credit.
That’s what I mean about not having an argument with the things he supports. Hell, AOC supports the same things, and she’s proud to be a Democrat.
But the thing is, we don’t have a living minimum wage, we don’t have universal health care.
Bernie hasn’t gotten much done, but by his words alone, he at least manages to keep some important ideas in the public discourse. It may take decades after his death for the reform to actually happen, though.
Or a big part of the blame. Let’s not forget that the election you’re speaking of, when Sanders pushed the Democratic party platform to the left, was the one that made Donald Trump President.
A lot of Sanders supporters want to ignore this. Their argument is that Sanders produced all the good results in 2016 and Clinton produced all the bad results.
Sanders talked about raising the minimum wage and creating a universal health care system. We didn’t get those things. What we got was Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett.
I want to make this as un-hijack-ish as possible since this is a Bernie thread and not a Hillary thread, but Bernie isn’t the reason Hillary lost at all. Hillary didn’t lose due to being too left, or the Democrats being too left. She lost because voters tend to replace the White House party after 8 years and Obama had been 8 years, and also because she wasn’t good at campaigning.
Anyway, back to the thread. Without people like Bernie, the Democrats would be almost bereft of effective progressive spokesmen. There aren’t a whole lot of them, and AOC isn’t quite as likable or experienced/knowledgeable as Bernie.
I think this football analogy could be taken a little bit further. It’s true that simply lobbing deep passes downfield every play will get you nowhere. But at the same time, a team that only keeps running the ball and grinding out yardage the slow, plodding way will not get far, and in fact the opposing team will “cheat” - they will just stack up defenders up to the line to stop you. You need to throw the ball deep every now and then to keep the opposing defense “honest.”
And in fact, if you keep getting stuffed, you will have to punt or turn over the ball on downs - and then the opposing team gets the ball. That’s what happens when mainstream Democrats don’t get much achieved when they hold power - after 4, 6 or 8 years, they “turn over the ball on downs” and the Republicans take over.
So while most of the other D’s may have been churning out few and slow yards on the ground, you still need a guy like Bernie who will be aggressive and throw downfield. Otherwise your fans (voters) get frustrated, bored, and might give up.
I’ll strongly disagree with the “likable” part – I think AOC is the most talented Democratic communicator since Barack Obama, by far. And she’s way, way ahead of where he was at her age. In 10 or 20 years, AOC may be up there with the very best Democratic communicators of all time (Kennedy, Obama, Clinton, in the modern era). Maybe even better. Underestimating AOC has proven to be a losing proposition, IMO.
He’s not a Democrat.
Going back to the Football analogy, Bernie is the guy who doesn’t want to be on the team at all unless he’s the QB. So he shows up every 4 years, makes a big stink about wanting to be QB, then stomps off like a big baby when the team chooses someone who has actually been helping the team while Bernie was off being independent.
He always caucuses with the Democrats. So, he is on the team all the time in the Senate.
Also note, Sanders is now 82.
Do you have a cite for this? AFAICT Bernie endorsed Biden and very strongly campaigned with him. And Hillary too (despite a lot of hurt feelings by many of his supporters).
Without taking this thread down this road again… whether or not you think this is an apt analogy for his presidential runs, this is not a reasonable analogy for his time as an elected representative for the state of Vermont for the past 30+ years, and his effectiveness during that time is the subject of this thread.
I feel that the fundamental divide in the Democratic party is between the people who want lofty goals and the people who want concrete results.
Somebody like Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez promises a lot more than somebody like Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton. But somebody like Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton delivers a lot more than somebody like Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I feel it’s an unfair apples-to-oranges argument to compare what one politician promises to what another politician delivers.
Well. It was clear to me that Bernie’s persistent pressure on the topic of minimum wage got other candidates to shift on that, and some real minimum wage changes occurred. So, there’s that.
Otherwise, I got nothing. With respect to sponsoring bills, legislators often do that knowing they won’t go through, but wanting the attention to the topic, or to themselves. Heck, Tulsi Gabbard sponsored around a dozen bills when she’d already been voted out, and Congress was out of session.
Sure, but as Maserschmidt pointed out, without the pressure from the ‘extremists’ (that’s not the best word, because it sounds negative, even if I don’t mean it to,) the middle wouldn’t budge. To use a worse analogy yet, if the Democratic Party is the donkey, it takes people like AOC and Bernie to prod the donkey into walking faster. The donkey wants to do either 1 mile per hour or no walking at all. AOC and Bernie want 10 miles per hour, and then at least we get the 3-4 miles per hour gait/pace that leads the nation towards some sort of meaningful progress.
I disagree with Biden’s policy on student loan forgiveness, but would he have even done it if it weren’t for the left flank prodding him to? Probably not. So the left flank deserves credit for giving the pressure.
To use your analogy, I think there’s a good argument that Sanders didn’t prod the donkey to go two miles an hour instead of one mile an hour. Sanders prodded a donkey that was going one mile an hour and caused the donkey to stumble and fall down.