You do realize that the president does not have the power to do that unilaterally, so absent cooperation from the legislature, his wish to do it solves nothing.
And all the rich people in government and all the rich people that give them money to get re-elected would never allow that. You can dream though.
I think Senator Sanders is the only candidate capable of turning 2016 into a wave election. His populist campaign has the potential to appeal to a lot of Americans if he can get people to hear his message and take his candidacy seriously. I’m not saying that this is likely to happen. I mean, I can hope but realistically getting past Hillary Clinton is a huge mountain to climb. But if he could win the primary and with Ms Clinton as his VP nominee and the backing of the Democratic establishment I can see him destroying whichever GOP candidate survives the primary and bringing in solid Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress.
At that point I think he could get a lot done. Remember what the Dems were able to do when they briefly held both houses at the beginning of the Obama Administration. Even without a wave election I believe a Sanders presidency would be better for the nation through his EOs and by appointing regulators that are willing to regulate. With the bully pulpit he could shine the light on American inequality and move the Overton window on economics.
I don’t see President Hillary Clinton carrying the House and Senate or being willing to tackle progress through Executive action more aggressively that President Obama has already done. Essentially I believe she would be little more than a placeholder who merely delays the inevitable GOP retaking of the White House. Think Barrack Obama minus the first 2 years when he got enough done to make his presidency a success.
Sanders can’t create a wave election because the party won’t get fully on board with him if he’s the nominee. I do think that Sanders himself can win, but his nomination would divide the party and probably hurt downballot.
Wave elections only happen when the party nominee is someone nearly everyone in the party can get behind, without reservations. The party leadership will not be happy at all if someone who isn’t even a Democrat wins the nomination and wants to take the party in a totally different direction.
Well, that’s true enough - for the GOP.
The same could be said of every other Presidential candidate in history.
The answer to the question in the title is “he wouldn’t”. Fortunately.
He also won’t get the nomination, and if he does, he might win Washington DC and Vermont. Maybe. My nightmare is that he runs against Trump, and either one wins.
Regards,
Shodan
I’ll just use this as an example of what seems to be a theme that Sanders is some kind of one-issue candidate. Hardly. His platform in fact seems to cover just about all the important issues.
How many of them can he get done? Depends on the makeup of Congress and how he approaches it. To my mind the attraction of Sanders is that he stands head and shoulders above all the other candidates on either side of the aisle on the criteria of integrity and intelligence. Meaning, respectively, a genuine concern with solving national problems instead of a self-serving quest for power, and a good prioritization of what those problems are. Those aren’t guarantees of success, they’re basic essentials – and it’s astounding how lacking they are in most of the other candidates.
The point that was made about getting just one or two things done doesn’t imply ignoring other problems. It’s saying that the nation would be extraordinarily further ahead if he managed to implement one or two of the truly progressive items from his platform in addition to everything else that’s routinely expected of a competent chief executive. I’d say that was true even if he only managed to implement partial, watered-down versions, as is practically inevitable when dealing with Congress. From small acorns to giant oaks, and all that.
I’m not hopeful that he can win the nomination, let alone a general election, considering the current state of American politics and the antipathy to progressive reforms. And it’s the nation’s loss. As I said before, I’m not aware of a single principle that Sanders advocates that isn’t already mainstream in every advanced country in the world.
I think Sanders does offer things for conservative Democrats. Ultimately his is a conservative vision, to preserve what we can of the American dream, and I think they will be encouraged by his hesitation on gun control. In any case, you can afford to not carry part of your coalition if you bring in big chunks of new voters. Sanders has come out in favor legalizing marijuana (which he can promise to deschedule without Congressional approval). An influx of young people and working class whites to the Dems would force a realignment of the electoral balance. Nonreligious conservatives might find themselves wandering in the wilderness with the rump GOP as the Democratic Party’s new alliance comes to dominate politics.
At least those are the possibilities I see in a Sanders win.
I’m a Sanders supporter and I’ve volunteered for the campaign. People who hate Hillary and think she is just a corporate stooge do exist. I’m not naming names but I’ve met them. I think people really overestimate what Sanders can do. Even the Democrats have. No real interest in enacting his agenda, let alone the Republicans. Fwiw I’ll support Hillary or a third party when Sanders loses the primary. I don’t live in a swing state so my vote doesn’t matter.
A big appeal to Sanders is he is the candidate who hopefully forces the Democrats to stop ignoring their base. The gop is terrified of their base, the Democrats just offer talking points and expect compliance from voters.
Yeah, he’ll probably fail. It’s not like he’s been in Washington for decades or anything; he probably has no idea how the system works.
Change is impossible. Let’s not even try. Why don’t we all vote for someone safe, who will choose moneyed interests over the greater good at every opportunity, but who will at least get things done?
And here we have exactly the reason I posted this thread.
Or “he’ll at least try” the entire point, regardless of his success? Or is getting someone like him elected a goal in of itself? I can see arguments for both of those.
Well, I’m not, though I’ll vote for Sanders in the primary. As a California voter, my little third-party protest vote is probably a safe gamble; I might not be so principled in a swing state. (Edit: also, voting from abroad is a pain.)
Or wait, I have a better idea! In the name of Change, let’s elect someone who will turn Washington into even more of a hopeless, inept deadlock than it’s been for the last umpty years, and then we can all feel good while another half-generation of critical limits and milestones go past, solidifying the damage to our economy, society and infrastructure. So we can all sit among the Max Headroom ruins and congratulate ourselves on our idealism!
And cause the trains to run on time.
That’s the kind of thing I’ve seen that I mentioned in my OP. The feeling I get from those people is, “The status quo will just lead us to as bad or worse anyway, since they’re all puppeteered by the same 1%ers, so I might as well go for the route that has at least a small hope. And feel morally superior to the sheep.” (The last part is for some, anyway.)
Can’t speak for others, but I doubt Sanders wins the primary because he can’t get black voters on his side. White liberals are only about 1/4 of the democratic party, and Sanders struggles to win support outside of this group.
For me the appeal is that Sanders actually talks about the economic injustices that people have to deal with which hopefully will force politicians to start doing things about this for fear of losing a primary.
No one wants Sanders to be the next Ralph Nader. As it gets closer to the convention some hard decisions have to be made. But in the meantime the more exposure his platform gets, and the more exposure the man himself gets, the greater the chance that this broken and corrupt system might get at least a tiny enlightened nudge in the right direction.
There’s nothing extreme about Sanders. There’s nothing extreme about wanting more children educated, caring for the environment, and ensuring that people have decent health care. There’s just something terribly extreme about the current political climate in America.
You simply can’t change direction of a ship this large in one administration - and to try is to court disaster of unimaginable scale, not just another Carter era.
There hasn’t been anyone running for President I could vote for without holding my nose for quite some time… but you vote for whomever is going to nudge the rudder the right direction, not someone who thinks or claims or believes s/he can take us on a right-angle-turn to paradise.
At the end of the Hope administration, I can’t but feel we’ve turned a few degrees in the right direction, and that either of the R candidates would have actually made things worse. The only reasonable option we have is that the end of the Clinton II administration will see us a few more degrees towards the good, and not fall for the idea that an extreme reform option - Trump or Sanders - could beach us in Tahiti.
I think we will see Clinton the candidate after the primary.
Well, if you phrase it like that, it’s like conservatives saying, *“There nothing extreme about wanting a secure border, a strong national defense and low taxation.”
*
Anything sounds moderate and reasonable if phrased the right way. The real issue is the policy details.
I would argue that it’s quite a bit more fundamental than that. You already have a secure border – as secure as it’s reasonably possible to make it. You already have by far the largest national defense force of any country in the world – by far. And if you factor in all the deductions and loopholes, you already have one of the lowest tax rates in the world, especially at the high income end. So what is it exactly that conservatives want that is so moderate and reasonable?
OTOH, the educational system is generally underfunded throughout and is becoming unaffordably out of reach at the post-secondary level while students get saddled with extortionate debt. The environment is going to hell especially in the area of climate change. The US is the only damn country in the entire civilized world without a program of universal health care. It also has one of the biggest income disparities between the rich and poor in the entire industrialized world. Those, ISTM, are real problems. Oddly enough, not a single one of them is a problem for the wealthiest segment of the population, only for everyone else. Funny thing, that.
So no, there’s nothing extremist about Sanders.