Oh snap. Isn’t that true of all Sanders’s Senate colleagues who have endorsed anyone?
Page waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down for Bernie. No current Senators, but one ex!
A question for Sanders supporters: What policy agenda that Sanders advocates and Clinton doesn’t do you think he could actually pass through a Republican held Congress and Senate filibuster?
I like Sanders, and think that he is playing a very useful role in mainstreaming progressive ideals, and is the perfect Democratic nomination runner up. But were he elected, one of two things would happen. Either he would cave to reality and compromise, disappointing all of his supporters who thought that they had elected a real fire brand, and instead ended up with just another establishment stooge. Or else he will push for his progressive agenda, produce another 4 years of absolutely nothing getting done, and be put forward in future years as an example of why progressivism is doomed to failure.
To advance the progressive agenda we really need to start at the grass roots level. Start by winning state offices. Undo Republican gerrymandering. Win back that Congress. Then once the foundation is laid, the next Sanders to come along can actually get it done.
The Tea Party didn’t start with a far right presidential candidate. It started at the state and congressional level. If progressives want a strong and lasting effect on the political dialogue that is where they should start.
Bernie says he can get his agenda through if he mobilizes people to really march on the Capitol and that if there are millions of people shouting for single payer outside Mitch McConnell’s office, he will have to give in. But will he? That doesn’t seem at all apparent to me. It strikes me that he will just get better insulation and make sure he’s got a good set of bodyguards to get to and from work.
Honestly, I’m not sure I like the idea of intimidating the opposite party into passing our agenda. Couldn’t they muster large crowds to fight back the other way? We should keep it as a representative democracy type thing, and strive to win at the ballot box.
Bernie is smart enough to realize he can’t push his agenda solely by being President, it does take widespread support. But banging on Mitch McConnell’s office does nothing–the only thing, the only thing, that will make the Republicans in Congress compromise is if a majority of their constituents want Bernie style policies. As the country has become extremely polarized and so many deep red, safe districts have been created, it is highly unlikely a significant number of Republican House members or even Republican Senators (since some entire states are uber polarized) would be willing to meaningfully compromise.
Senators are usually willing to budge a little more since some of the big purple States you really do have to ride the line as a Senator (like Rob Portman in Ohio as a Republican or even Sherrod Brown as a Democrat from Ohio both kind of need to be willing to move a little bit left/right as the winds shift.)
Occupy Wall Street style “popular protest” will not shift ensconced congress critters in safe district–they don’t work for those people, they work for their constituencies back home.
Great op-ed from TAP editor: I Get Sanders’ Appeal. But He’s Not a Credible President. - POLITICO Magazine
I also view it as highly questionable to call HRC an “establishment stooge” or anyone an “establishment stooge” because they compromise on their campaign talking points once in office.
Compromise is the foundation of our Republic and the full intention of the writers of the constitution. Not compromising is the un-American position, not the principled one. I argue that the President and the Congress both have some level of duty to compromise at least somewhat to keep the country running. Neither side should or is obligated to give up everything, but just being obstructionist is not good (and in the past 7 years it’s primarily been Congress doing the obstructing.)
Plus, Bernie has lived in a cocoon of privilege. I’m not talking about white male privilege (which he does have), but about the privilege of running in liberal, Hippie Vermont. He has never had to compromise because he represents a State with lots of cooky lefty liberals like himself. If Bernie had stayed in New York (where he was born and raised) we wouldn’t know his name today, because he never would’ve been Senator of New York, he might win election as mayor in some small New York town, maybe. Hillary won that election not just off her name recognition, but because she was willing to wage the sort of campaign and play the sort of politics necessary to be Senator from New York. Bernie would be known as a small town mayor (at best) if he was from New York and not Vermont.
To be frank, I trust the acumen and political abilities of someone able to win a Senate election in a large, complex, diverse State like New York far better than I do a firebrand “preaching to the kool aid drinkers” which is more descriptive of a Sanders figure running for Senate in Vermont.
I am not on board with Sanders policies–but I’m not blasting him as an individual. I’m just pointing out his road has been far easier than Clinton’s and he’s never been in a situation where he’d have to choose between a type of compromise and losing, Clinton has–and that is also similar to how a President must behave.
I don’t think it’s fair to blast Hillary for taking big money, either–no one wins campaigns in large states without big donors. Before Obama, no one had funded a huge portion of a Presidential campaign with small donors, and even Obama had money from big donors. So we’re holding Hillary to an impossible standard. You’re also assuming if she takes money from people she is beholden to them. I have never bought into this.
If you think of a campaign as a Fortune 500 company, and donors as shareholders, the reality is that on the scale of a big campaign even a relatively large investor is relatively powerless. They might control 2-3% of the company, but the board probably isn’t bowing and scraping to their every concern. In fact some of the management issues at large public firms (i.e. the diffuse ownership) is why I think big donors have limited direct influence in Presidential candidacies. Take a “typical” donor who puts a few hundred K into a campaign through various mechanisms, well, campaigns cost like a $1bn now at the Presidential level. Even someone giving $1m is only 1/1000th of that. I find it specious without direct observed evidence of corruption that just taking money which is necessary to compete makes you corrupt. Hillary has to play by the rules of the game if she wants to win–and you know what, if Bernie is the nominee you better believe he’s going to get some money from traditional big donors, the DNC (which is often funded by big donors) and etc. Just like Obama did, despite Obama raising a fortune from small donors.
Presidents can be their own man (or woman.) Regardless of who backs them. Theodore Roosevelt was put into the Vice Presidency due to big party bosses who wanted him out of the Governorship of New York (where he was causing trouble in their mind), but he gave those same bosses essentially no regard when he ascended to the Presidency. Harry Truman was the product of machine politics in Missouri, but he was absolutely his own man in the White House. Obama’s #2 and #3 donors were Microsoft and Google, and I don’t see any real argument that Obama is corruptly favoring either of them. In fact, with some of his policies on trying to push encryption back doors and etc (which he’s backed off from), he was not being friendly to them. His Justice Department has wrangled with both companies on several occasions to get at customer’s private data, there’s a situation that last I checked was still going on in Ireland. Irish Microsoft servers contain information on U.S. customers that DOJ wants, but Microsoft has been fighting it, saying a U.S. warrant lacks jurisdiction in Ireland and the only way for Microsoft to comply is to violate Irish law. Obama has supported net neutrality though, which both Microsoft (and much more) Google have supported. So it’s a mixed bag, but I don’t see a reason to just say a candidate taking money means they are corrupt.
Great points!
Ok, I know crossposting is frowned upon but I posted this in the Sanders Campaign thread. But thats getting a little long and this directly touches on Martin Hyde’s post on compromise:
I’m curious if a Sanders fan can address something that’s been nagging me. It’s seems to be taken as a given that Sanders is good at working out deals and generally being bipartisan, after all he’s an independent. That should make it easier to bridge the divide. And certainly on certain issues, he can find support from different quarters. He can find Republicans who’ll back his gun stances, Tea Party members who’ll back his bank ideas and Dems who’ll be with him on climate. But beyond that, on the whole, he appears quite partisan. Whenever I look at sources that track voting records, he does poorly. For instance:
The Lugar Center ranks him 217 out 225 on their bipartisanship index.
Open Congress notes that he most often votes with Senator Maria Cantwell (she votes party line 95% of the time)
Ballotpedia describes him as an “average Democrat”, meaning he votes Democratic the majority of the time.
So what is the notion that Sanders is so bipartisan based on?
From this article, written by the vice-chair of The Democratic Socialists of America, offers some cogent thoughts.
Now the author further argues that in reality neither will be able to get anything done and posits a version of the Overton window argument that we have heard before … a theory of long term change: “what is required is a prolonged effort by his [Sanders’] supporters not just to mobilize for a day or a year, but to work for several years to elect the Congress that will pass fundamental reforms.”
He grants that “Hillary may be better prepared to be president than any candidate in Lord knows how long: She knows the issues; she has her task forces.” He believes that Sanders would generate more excitement yet still concludes with some optimistic (from his POV) realism: “I still believe the fundamentals of American history suggest that the nation is not ready to elect a socialist president (much less one who would be 75 when he took office)—but it’s early yet, the Republicans have problems of their own, and it’s a most unusual year.”
I am not saying that I agree with all that the author wrote but it is a very considered analysis and worth a read.
Pretty realistic!
The age effect is real but I’m not sure how real yet, again–polling this early out in the full national is very unrealiable. I hate to always rely on him to back up my polling arguments, but he was right across the country in 2012 and 2008, Nate Silver has frequently pointed out the very fact that national head to head general election polling this far before the primaries have even been decided is essentially about as reliable as an oracle reading the “bones” or tea leaves.
I know the age effect is real because I know a few people who voted Obama who have said they are very leery of voting for a man who will be 75, these people have usually indicated they wouldn’t vote for Trump or Cruz, but might vote for another Republican before putting a 75 year old man in office.
Plus, from a practical effect even Sanders’ supporters should have some concerns about putting their hero in office. I think he has like a cumulative actuarial chance of death during his first term of around 15% (remember that while life expectancy is in the high 70s for men at birth, men who have made it to 75 can usually expect almost another 11 years of life.) But there’s also more at stake than actuarial risk of death. Which is high (Obama’s cumulative odds of living throughout an entire eight years at election were like 96%–McCain on the other hand had a roughly 25% chance of not living through both terms if he had won in 2008, albeit it looks like John is going to beat those odds, and has also kept his health.) But back to risks other than death–the older you get the higher your risk of things that don’t kill you but definitely don’t make you strong–Alzheimer’s, stroke, heart attack, cancers of all type. Some of these could strike directly at executive function, others could lead to significant and lasting physical impairment, reduced energy and etc that would fundamentally weaken the office of the President and possibly justify a Presidential resignation or even usage of the 25th Amendment to put the President on ice.
I guess that’s why we have a Vice President (one of the only reasons, in fact), but if that Vice President is a younger more moderate Democrat (as is almost certain to be the case), then why are we voting for Sanders again? Police officers in most jurisdictions have mandatory retirement ages in the 60s, same for pilots, now obviously there are physical reasons for that, but we are probably being a little foolish to act like physical infirmity has no bearing on being President. This isn’t the job it was when FDR was President–in that the President is expected and all but required to travel a lot, FDR could be as effective as he was because of a much reduced travel and appearance schedule versus a modern President of course, in FDR’s time he actually set some Presidential travel records, but still for the vast majority of his Presidency he was in Washington, spoke to the people through radio, and didn’t have to go through the rigors of traveling as a disabled person.
Our oldest President, Ronald Reagan, to be frank the last few years of his Presidency was probably not entirely fit for the office (let’s ignore the obvious jokes that some could make about his entire Presidency if you’re against Reagan politically), Bernie is even older than Reagan was at the beginning of his second term.
FWIW if I otherwise supported Bernie, the age thing may not be a deciding factor for me, since I do think the 25th Amendment and the Vice Presidency provide a degree of protection. But if I was truly on the fence it would be a factor, for sure.
But there’s also a fear of “rule by aides” if Bernie’s mind goes. If they are able to reduce his public appearances somehow (and I think it would be hard) it might not be easy to get a dementia-suffering Bernie to resign or to implement the 25th Amendment.
I think it it is a legitimate concern.
P.J. Podesta makes a case, based on polls, that Clinton is actually less electable in the general than Sanders.
Because he is very healthy and it is not at all unlikely he’ll finish out his term, even two terms, in good mental health.
I guess we’ll never know if Sanders is electable. We will see about Hillary, but it’s likely to be against a very weak opposition.
Bill Curry (who was WH counselor to President Clinton, and a two-time Dem nominee for Governor of Connecticut) blasts the Dem Establishment and all its little wizards up one side, down the other, and in and out through a fresh new asshole.
The ACA is huge. Seriously huge.
A lot of people only see the consumer side. There’s so much more to it, and the changes are enormous. I work with the changes every day.