No apologies necessary. As impressed as I am by him in this silly season, I am starting to appreciate that he may be a bit shy of the type of experience and political gravitas that will put him over the top if he decides to run again. (If this time does not work out for him.)
Sorry, I’m not getting you… say that again, more slowly.
Forgive me if I’m mistaken, but didn’t Sanders double down with something like, ‘It’s okay to mention something good that was done by a bad dictator.’?
Well it’s at least higher than Buttigieg’s chances (0.4% chance of getting a plurality). Right now just Sanders, Biden, and Bloomberg have decent chances of plurality (67%, 24%, and 8% respectively). Of course those numbers can change after Super Tuesday, but they likely wouldn’t benefit Warren (or Buttigieg) that much.
Regarding Sanders and Cuba. It is silly to take the position that our bad guys must be pure bad and that any factual positive about them must be denied in service of cartoonish villainess.
Truth actually does matter.
He earns points with me.
So you are saying there are good people on both sides?
Regards,
Shodan
No. He’s saying that even bad people can do sometimes do a good thing.
In fact, that’s exactly what Bernie said.
See the difference?
Truth does matter. And the truth is that nobody disputes the fact that high literacy rates are a good thing in any society. In my opinion three generations of Kims in North Korea don’t get sufficient credit for having among the highest literacy rate in the world.
Seriously Shodan that is a dumb comment.
Bad people can and usually do still have aspects that are not evil. If there was something positive Trump accomplished or was right about pI wouldn’t pretend it did not exist. Can’t think of anything but if.
He did. I think in the 80s, he said that Castro’s people liked Castro more than Americans believed, because of things like his literacy programs. Cooper brought it up recently to say, hey, how about the locking up and murdering of dissidents though?
Sanders said yeah, we should condemn authoritarianism, but that also, things like literacy programs are good and people want them, even if somebody like Castro is doing them. I assume the point was that socialist programs in general are, therefore, not bad just because Castro or pick-a-dictator had them, although it would have helped for him to try to make that part more explicit. Maybe he did and it didn’t make the sound bites or whatever, I dunno.
I think one of the advantages of holding the line where he did – bad men bad, good program good – is that there’s going to be fear-mongering regardless, and if he looks like he’s walking back, that’s inherently untrustworthy. It would be fair to say that after he’s been yelling about a revolution for 40 years, it would be obviously phony for him to suddenly say that oh yeah, socialist revolutions have all uniformly been shit, I was wrong about all of those. And people would think oh shit, he’s lying about what he wants to do, he really is a scumbag communist who doesn’t want us to be able to pick our favorite deodorant because that’s capitalism.
If he, instead, clarifies where he’s been at all along, and does a better job of articulating that the state is not actually going to seize the means of production from Elon Musk or whatever, even if it raises teacher salaries, then I think that makes clear just how much merit there is to criticisms made in bad faith like:
I’m not super bent out of shape because he complimented Castro on his literacy record. I get it. I do. But if he’s so committed to being consistent about bad guys doing some good things with respect to literacy, then perhaps he should give props to the Kims of NK for their education policies. Or maybe he should have said that his views on it have evolved and matured since then instead of doubling down. It was a politically unsound decision and it’s okay to admit that about Sanders, even by those of us who understand his motives.
Nah. That just means the next pitch would be off speed…
Was he asked about North Korea?
I didn’t see the debate.
No. But he took the trouble to criticize it anyway. So he might have mentioned their literacy rates in passing.
It won’t be a nothing job IF we manage to get 50 Dem Senators. Then a Dem VP would be breaking ties on party-line votes morning, noon, and night. Then her being a good Senator would be right in her wheelhouse as VP.
The truth is that Castro didn’t even improve the literacy in Cuba that much, so why go out of your way to prop him up?
Is he going to go out of his way to talk about what a great job Trump has done with the economy?
Or she could be a good Senator as a Senator. Why would we need to have her specifically to break ties?
Cite?
96% not doing it for you, huh
I for one am shocked (SHOCKED!) that Socsback would make an assertion that had no relation to reality and was, in fact, untrue.
Before Castro it was around 77%, according to UNESCO.
First of all, they started at 77%, and improved to 96% (reportedly). It’s not like they started from zero. They had one of the highest literacy rates in Latin America prior to Castro. Not to mention, why would Bernie take the data from a police state like Castro’s Cuba as a legitimate measure? There are all kinds of reasons to question those numbers, obviously. But yeah, let’s just take Castro at his word, and give him an attaboy.