Just because I don’t want to go all Chavez on the Tea Party doesn’t mean I support it.
I think Robert Reich has too much influence, personally. But I’m not trying to rally 60% of the population to take away his tenure. Fox News is too influential, as well, imo, but I’m not trying to change the constitution to reign them in.
The whole idea that you can “get money out of politics” is more deluded than any of Trump’s deluded goals.
If money doesn’t buy infuence it isn’t money. Good luck getting rid of money.
Nothing all that radical about Sander’s policy proposals. If he hadn’t called himself a “socialist”, they would have done it for him. Do it every time, Social Security was Marxist, so was Medicare, whole country gonna collapse.
Single payer, same thing. Maybe the jury was out thirty years ago, now, not so much. All over the world, it just works. That’s all. It works. What are we to do with people who insist they are hard-nosed and realistic, demand proof, you show them the whole friggin’ world, and they won’t budge?
The big thing I find problematic about Bernie Sanders is the likelihood that, even if he wins by a big enough margin that Dems regain the majorities in both houses of Congress, he’s setting himself up to dissipate his momentum on the politically impossible (single-payer) or the relatively useless (restoring Glass-Stegall).
Change is hard, and there’s no point in backing a change candidate unless I think s/he’s going to be effective in taking advantage of the opportunities to implement change. Otherwise, it just discourages people and makes them cynical about the possibility of meaningful political change.
No. But neither do I think that “anti corporate” is a good thing. Someone perceived as an enemy is less likely to get actual regulations that matter put in place.
Believe it or not corporations actually contribute to both our and the world economy, hire people, make things and provide services that allow other businesses big and small to function and hire people and make things. They need oversight and regulation. They need firm rules that are actually well enforced on all. They need to pay their fair share.
That is not stringing them up and running them out of town. The are not enemies.
Are we trying to sell Bernie Sanders as the “hope and change” candidate now? I don’t think that will work.
It worked with Obama because he was a Rorschach blot. He didn’t have any baggage and people could project onto him the notion that he was going to be transformative. Sanders is a socialist, has always been a socialist, and has made it clear that he will be a socialist if (God forbid) he gets elected.
But even if the impossible happens and he gets elected with a Dem majority in both houses of Congress, that will last, at most, two years, until he either fails to get anything enacted or succeeds in getting anything enacted, and the US public hears the sucking sound as the economy goes down the toilet. One cannot transform the USA in two years, thank God.
Robert Reich apparently ordered the Flavor-Aid in the Big Gulp size.
It’s interesting to me that GOP partisans buy that Sanders is completely different from Clinton.
Shodan: What makes you think Sanders would pursue different policies from Clinton? What policies? Or would you make the identical post but replacing Sanders with Clinton?
So, the OP thinks this election is about “bringing power back to the people”. When was this golden age of people power that this election is trying to bring us back to? Because I don’t think that golden age ever existed, in which case… why wasn’t every election before this one really about “bringing power to the people”.
But if you really believe we need to return to that mythical time, then maybe you should be more embracing of Trump’s campaign slogan.
The electorate is fed up with the establishment? What a scoop. That was evident back in, what, August? Maybe October if you wanted to add some time to see if it was temporary.
A Bernie presidency might shatter the nomination vacancy record.
I don’t understand what differentiates Reich’s remarks from what every other Sanders supporter says. Why is this worthy of a thread? Because he’s a Clinton guy who’s switched over?
Is this supposed to be some stumper? Because it reads like you just thought of a couple questions and didn’t even stop to think about any answers.
First off, why would it matter if there was a golden age in the past? The OP’s post is about perceptions, not reality. All that matters is that people think there was a time when they had more power. And even if some acknowledge that this time never existed, it’s not like taking out the word “back” changes their goals.
Why wasn’t this always an issue in the campaigns? Because the candidates didn’t make it one. Of course, they did back in 2008, when Obama ran on “hope and change,” but, for a while before that, people were pretty content with the status quo. And, even when they weren’t, running against the status quo is dangerous if the status quo is why you have a chance at being President. So only viable outsiders could even attempt to run on this idea, and outsiders only are viable if everyone is unhappy, and no insider can capture them.
And why aren’t all these people going for Trump? The OP is about people who are. But there are also those who don’t like the authoritarianism or lack of any specific plans to actually fix anything. They’re also usually moderate to liberal, so they’re going to look at the Democratic side. Sanders is running a more populist campaign, so he’s their choice.
All the OP is saying is that there is a large portion of the populace who feel that they are not doing well, despite the recovery from the recession, and so they are attracted to the two candidates who are running on a promise of change.
I mean, I agree that this is nothing new. But apparently BG thought this guy said it in some better way, or that it meant more from a Clinton supporter.
I would not say “back.” OTOH, it is doubtful that the results of the Gilen-Page study would have been quite the same in all periods past. Probably rather different, e.g., during the New Deal era. But we can do better even than that.
