I get a lot of emails from a group that wants to “end Citizens United.” They want me to fill out questionnaires (well, they really want me to give them money, but they tell me they want my opinion first). One item on the (very short) questionnaire is, paraphrasing, “How important to you is the elimination of Citizens United? The single most important issue, one of the 2 or 3 most important issues, or one of the many issues you care about?”
I picked the third alternative. Couldn’t help but feel that they were disappointed. Half expected that a big popup would appear and say “Are you SURE? Don’t you REALLY think it’s the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE?” --Anyway, I’m with you…one of the many issues I care about, but not at the top of the list.
Another reason to downgrade Sanders is the regular use of that term by his supporters. The concept of defining the debate in such a way as to make it what you want it to be is as old as politics. It is not a recent discovery, and this Overton chap does not deserve credit for it.
They’ve always mostly gotten in line behind their nominee when it mattered, and they will this time, too.
It’s a leap to assume the Senate will stay in GOP hands, or that the House will be as intransigent under Ryan as it was under Boehner.
Don’t kid yourself. It’s a sense of irritation at most.
Sure. The fact that a senator who had 3% of the vote when it started and was originally seen as a fringe candidate like Kucinich is almost tied with the front runner is nothing more than an irritation. Kucinich was an irritation, Sanders is a threat.
People like to write off the Sanders campaign as dumb kids, but it is a generational shift. Among people under 30, they support Sanders over Clinton 6-1. There is an inverserelationship between age and Sanders support.
The writing is on the wall, if the democratic party wants to maintain its power base, it is going to have to become more progressive to win over young people (young people being anyone under 45).
In 2020, millennials will make up almost 40% of voters. I’m guessing the house will stay in GOP hands due to redistricting. Even if the dems win it in 2016, they will lose it again in 2018. 2020 is the year we will start seeing true progressive reform, and the 2020s could signal a golden progressive era for various reasons.
I’ll let my daughter know - she is funny and astute and at sixteen, none of her “friends” appreciate jokes like that. She has to make them around our friends if she wants to get a laugh.
Now explain how that invalidates the fact that Sanders is moving the framing of the debate left, please. Because I cannot for the life of me deduce your argument here
I’d argue that (cough…Nader…cough), but that they haven’t and regularly take their toys and go vote Green is one of the reasons the Party as an establishment doesn’t take them very seriously. They aren’t the “base” - their base is minorities and women.
I wouldn’t say that it’s the worst it’s ever been. And for the time being, when you really stop and consider some of the alternatives around the world, yeah, Americans still have much to be content about.
But what I see in terms of the current trends doesn’t bode well for the future. I agree that what’s happening now is consistent with our national character in the greater historical context. But regardless of which economic system you have, which political system we abide by, people have a ‘fairness meter’ hardwired into their DNA.
In America, the classic response to inequality is improving thyself, an inspired love of equality, as Alexis de Toqueville wrote (IIRC). But consider the fact that most CEOs can get paid more to be fired before the end of their contract than most of us will make in the span of 10 years. Where’s the fairness in that? Where’s the inspiration in that?
Watching the last debate, I could see why people might be attracted to his message. That’s fine. But that’s not a qualification to lead the country, a task for which Clinton seems infinitely better suited.
In my opinion, the “big appeal” for a presidential candidate shouldn’t be that they are threatening their own party – well, not that Sanders is actually a Democrat out of anything but convenience and ballot access – but that they are actually able to win and do well with the job once they win it. We’re not holding an election for Chief Zealot.
I was hoping this discussion would avoid insults of Clinton vs. Sanders camp. I’m a Sanders supporter but I agree with what Bernie Sanders said, Hillary on her worst day is infinitely better than president Trump or Cruz.
You are free to insult all the young people, but young people lean left because they’ve seen the system fail when they were at their most vulnerable. It is the opposite of people who were young in the 70s and 80s. back then people came of age politically when they were seeing the failures of leftism (under Carter) and the success of conservatism (under Reagan).
Right now young people are seeing the failures of movement conservatism. Unaffordable health care, plutocracy, oligarchy, an unstable financial system, income inequality, constant financial insecurity, draconian policing, abusive drug war policies, oppression of minorities, etc. And they are moving towards the opposite end of the spectrum because of it.
The political bias people today have will follow them their whole lives.
Which is another reason that “the Party” isn’t too worried about the millennials becoming a huge part of the demographic - as they get older - as a population - they will likely move to a more economic centrist position.
Indeed, speaking purely from a voting perspective, minorities and women are truely the base of the Democratic Party, and their numbers far exceed the numbers of progressives. From the standpoint of ideology, the Democratic Party has not had a progressive base since the DLC made leftish neoliberalism the new order of the party. The Democratic Party, to me, (as I do consider myself a progressive) is a rather unwieldy tool to implement progressive policy with, except I also have to share that tool with neo-liberals and the nonideological voters who care mostly about social issues.
You are assuming Sanders is not qualified. He has been working in civics for over 50 years. He was mayor of the Burlington, Vermont when president Obama was a teenager. Sanders was serving in federal congress when president Obama was still in law school. Yet Obama is perfectly qualified to be president, yet somehow Sander’s 50 year involvement in civics and politics isn’t enough.
Also actually listen to what young people talk about. Income inequality, lack of good jobs, unaffordable health care, expensive college, plutocracy.
Why would getting a job make people stop caring about that stuff? if anything it will make you care more if you have to support a family. If you have to support a family then the lack of good jobs, student loans, overpriced health care, a financial system that could collapse at any moment and lead to mass layoffs, etc. becomes a bigger issue, not a smaller issue.
A. The Clintons are friendly to moderate Democrats like myself, who believe in abortion rights (I think it should always be legal until contractions begin), gay rights, banning assault weapons and gun BG checks, but aren’t necessarily doctrinaire to much of the other stuff on the left (eg death penalty, foreign policy, welfare, etc.). Even tho Hillary is tacking to the left to please some in the base, I know its just that.
She and her husband (they were/are buy one, get one free) believe in forging consensus, bipartisanship, and getting things done
They are willing to call out extremes on both the right and the left, as they did from 1993-2001 and Hillary did as Senator from 2001-2009. Hillary standing up for the Jewish State makes me very happy. She is for making college more affordable, but doesn’t promise stuff like “free college for all,” etc. They don’t engage in class warfare.
The Clintons dramatically increased the Democrats’ electoral college base and average; from 1968-1988, it was barely 100 electoral votes; from 1992-present, its well over 300. I’m happy about that because on most issues, I disagree with Republicans
I am very concerned about the far-left lurch the base of the party has undertaken. The Clintons can and will stop it.
Conservative Democrats - 15% of electorate.
Disadvantaged Democrats - 10% of electorate.
Liberals - 19% of electorate.
Liberals are the biggest bloc of the democratic coalition. However one could easily argue that the other two groups are pretty much all women and minorities.
Also it is more single women than women in general, I think single women have a 60-80% bias towards the democrats.
However writing off 1/5 of the electorate as ‘not important’, especially considering that that 1/5 of the electorate tends to be among the most educated, most informed, most activist, most likely to donate money, etc is a pretty big mistake for any political party to make. Who donates money, volunteers, tells their friends to vote, debates on blogs, etc? It is financially struggling minorities and single women with a high school diploma, or college educated liberals? The answer is obvious. Writing off the largest, best educated, most activist aspect of the democratic coalition is not a winning program.
It seems that Bernie’s supporters see Clinton’s ‘incrementalism’ as a weakness, but the reality is that is precisely how the Framers designed our government. You can only change things in radical fashion (e.g. New Deal) when there is overwhelming support for the changes. FDR was able to align the White House and Capitol Hill because he inherited a 3-year period of 25 percent unemployment, a collapsed financial system, economic contraction, and a host of other miserable economic conditions, all of which resulted in economic distress for the majority of the country. And those who weren’t feeling distressed directly were certainly anxious about the prolonged consequences caused by the mounting outrage of those who were. It’s not an understatement to say that the economic crisis was, at that point, becoming a growing constitutional crisis.
We are absolutely nowhere near that point right now. Yes, we see a lot of alarming signs at the moment, and I’m grateful that someone like Bernie Sanders has had the courage to raise the profile on some of these issues and to make things like single-payer health care more mainstream. But Bernie Sanders simply does not have an FDR mandate. Obama was actually much closer to having that kind of mandate, but I’ve always felt that whatever mandate he had was blunted by racial prejudice against him and a sensationalist press corps that has turned news into reality tv. Regardless of whether or not this is true, what is true is that Obama had more of a mandate and even went more mainstream than Sanders, and he also got pushed back.
The result is, Obama was forced to be an incremental, pragmatic president. And there’s nothing at all wrong with that, for the simple fact that this is exactly how our system was designed and most presidents will fit into this category. Bernie Sanders is not another Tedd Roosevelt. Not another Franklin Roosevelt. Not another Lincoln. Short of that, he’ll be an incremental deal maker who will gradually disillusion his fan base. Or he will be a complete and utter failure who will disillusion everybody.
The concept of defining the debate in such a way as to make it what you want it to be is as old as politics. It is not a recent discovery, and this Overton chap does not deserve credit for it.