I need you to tell me about Bernie. I never paid close attention to him before, but I have been watching him debate Clinton tonight and guess what…
I like Bernie!
He seems like a decent guy.
I disagree with all of his politics, and will never vote for him. But I like him.
Will you be voting for Bernie?
There was a debate last night? Who knew…
How could you miss it? It was plastered all over page 12 in today’s news!
there might be a Wikipedia page or something…
You can’t know a person from watching him on TV. According to reports I have read he is anabrasive jerk.
They all are but Carson, and he has other problems.
Ha ha. You didn’t even read that article, did you?
I don’t watch the Democratic debates – it’s just some boring politicians discussing politics. Kind of reminds me of a Canadian political debate. It’s the Republican ones that are comedy gold. It’s always a toss-up if the original clown show is going to be funnier than the SNL skit that inevitably follows it. Quite honestly you’d be hard pressed to invent a cast of characters like that outside of some fanciful TV sitcom.
I could have a laugh at how stupid and ignorant many Americans are when it comes to politics, if it wasn’t for the disturbing reality that the US affects most if us across the globe. Bernie Sanders is seeking nothing more than sensible ideas that work across the Western world ouside of the brainwashed zone. It’s a pity he’s not young and lacks presidential hair, but he’s the best you 've got by a mile. On the Republican side, you can have a megalomaniac or a liar. On the Democratic side you can have someone with a rubbish senatorial record, useless foreign secretarial record and inseparable cosy links to Wall Street. Your rcorporate owned, 100% anti Sanders media are trying to write off Bernie, suggesting he’s losing and unelectable, so that the sheep will assume Hillary is the only option. Wake up and Feel the Bern. He really is the only hope for America…and the rest of us.
Nothing like self-styled ‘experts’ who don’t even live here. Move along, nothing to see here.
While his electability is a matter of conjecture, Sanders is, in fact, losing.
I live here, and Horsehead is right. Maybe if you actually used the World Wide Web to learn about the rest of the world, you’d realize that the USA gets a raw deal in its government policies in comparison to northern and western Europe.
Nothing tells me a person has amateurish half-baked political ideas like an insistence that the only explanation for disagreeing opinions is ignorance.
I support Sanders, have done so possibly longer than you’ve been alive. And I know that there are legitimate, well-considered, ethical arguments against supporting the policies he supports.
The sheeple don’t need to wake up, dudes.
Bernie is a totally mainstream politician by any western standard outside the USA.
Not aware there is anything remotely controversial in his policies or economics - standard practice for decades elsewhere.
Bernie seems to be the first clear example of the internet influencing political judgement, the USA is becoming less parochial, the corporate media finally doesn’t define the entire message.
I did back in the day many years ago up in Vermont. Back then Bernie had much more fire breathing rhetoric, and much more socialist hard line than he appears to have today. He has either changed his views, or learned to hide his real views well when speaking.
There is a less than winning Power-Ball ticket non-zero percent chance that I’ll ever get to meet Bernie. I hear he’s a nice guy.
Or Hillary. Or Bill. Or Barry. Or Jimmy Carter (I’m glad that you are doing better, Jimmy. We Still Need You!). GL, OP.
Yes, there are. And there’s also ignorance! 
Sometimes it does come down to a difference in core values. But how many average voters – the proverbial man in the street – would you be able to find who can articulate those legitimate, well-considered arguments, and how many are in that lovely sector who would never vote for Bernie because he’s a dirty commie? How many know that most of Bernie’s policy proposals on things like financial regulation, taxation, and health care are normative policies throughout first-world democracies? How many think that Obama – a conservative centrist, let’s face it – is a “socialist”? Actually, how many think he’s a Muslim born in Kenya? According to this poll, nearly a third of all Americans and 43% of Republicans believe he’s Muslim; according to a different poll, 60% of Trump supporters do. How many legitimate, well-considered arguments about Bernie are you going to get out of this crowd?
He’s anti-GMO. That position comes from ignorance. It’s a position on which he, to the best of my knowledge, disagrees with Clinton. Therefore, it’d a reason I prefer Clinton to Sanders.
I broadly — broadly — favor many of the things Sanders favors. I believe the US will eventually need to transition to some kind of single-payer health care model, for instance. But Sanders is running a pie in the sky campaign in which he is promising profound societal change with no concrete plan for getting from A to B. We’ve already seen how our obstructionist legislature will stonewall even a moderately liberal president’s ambitions. Sanders hand-waves that away, saying the people should/will just rise up and demand their representatives enact his policies. He bases his proposals on growth projections that most legitimate economists agree are absurd. If elected, I think he would bungle his agenda so badly it would tarnish the ideas he espouses for a generation or more.
As I’ve written in other threads, the kind of change he is advocating is possible — but it’s not brought about by quixotic bids for the presidency; it’s brought about by massive organizing, using and eventually taking over existing political infrastructures to build strongholds for your ideas at the local and state levels. The Reagan revolution began with a grassroots uniting of fiscal conservatives and evangelicals in the wake of Barry Goldwater’s defeat in 1964, entailing years of anonymous activism with no concrete promise of a reward; Reagan didn’t just get elected and snap his fingers to make all that shit happen. What Sanders is trying to do is the equivalent to building a house from the attic downwards.
In our own day, the Tea Party demonstrated all too effectively how to make a more ideologically pure political movement: by either primarying or scaring the bejesus out of moderates so that they toe your line. Bernheads, frankly, don’t care as much, and the candidate himself offers no guidance or leadership in that sphere.
I think in a very real, important sense, Sanders doesn’t want to be president. He wants to implement his moonshot ideas for restructuring the US economy, but to actually steer the country on the global stage doesn’t seem to interest him. (He put his foreign policy team together, what, two weeks ago?) He was a protest candidate caught off-guard when masses of people actually took him seriously. He’s already done a service in forcing Clinton to tack to the left, and I am grateful he has. In an important way, even though he seems destined to lose the nomination, Sanders has achieved an important victory. Why not leave it at that?