You can’t depend on people to vote for your candidate if your don’t respect them. As DSeid said, it isn’t the issues, its the attitude. At least some of them will stay home. And anyone who lived through Bush/Gore knows elections can be swung because some people stay home.
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Clinton’s has come out for placing strict limits on fracking actually. Admittedly met with some skepticism. She is however to “the left” at least of President Obama and Governor Brown of CA on this issue.
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No question in my mind that there are problems with fracking and that much stricter controls and regulations are required. Outright bans? (Which is where Sanders is on the issue.) Please review in English how bad coal burning power plants are and how many have been shutting down precisely because of the glut in natural gas that fracking techniques have enabled. I am a big supporter of renewables (and have lost some money putting my money where my mouth is in investments to date, no regrets) but scaling up wind, solar, and geothermal will not, cannot, happen with the speed to make the impact that switching from coal to natural gas has. We need time to scale up renewables. And we have not even broached the international and security implications of America being an energy supplier more than a dependent importer.
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Sanders’ proposed absolute moratorium on relicensing of nuclear power plants is similarly wrongheaded from an environmental perspective. Phasing out nuclear does not mean one for one replacement with solar, wind, and geothermal. It just means more natural gas reliance instead, which while a heck of a lot better than coal, is still less environmentally friendly than nuclear is.
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But yes, Sanders and Clinton do not share the exact same positions and on some Sanders is to the more extreme side than others in the Democratic mainstream, especially those who actually are in positions of having to implement decision as real things with actual consequences rather than things that are said to pander.
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Meanwhile, would Sanders actually have the ability to deliver on the fracking or nuclear plant relicensing moratoriums? In particular fracking is mostly regulated at state levels. And even a solidly Democratic Congress would not completely back him on his energy positions.
Yes it would be. If it happens it won’t be without the civil wars. This cycle is seeing it and it will continue over the next several years.
One possible outcome? The authoritarian wing goes off on their own taking a bunch of Tea Party House seats with them and switching a few other House and Senate seats to the Democratic side in the process as they divide the GOP vote. The leftover start rebranding themselves with statements like this and actually do move to the center. Team with the democrats on immigration reform, maintain some elements of fiscal conservatism, and become more social moderates. Gradually the authoritarian party withers.
IF meanwhile the Democratic side became an uncompromising Progressive movement and drives moderates out? Yes that rebranded GOP could within a few cycles be a place for them to go.
Ceding the center is rarely wise politically.
Sorry for the multi-posting but here is this recent bit from Senator Sanders bothers me. Lots.
No bubbeleh, you are not going to get to dictate single-payer and a $15 an hour minimum wage, and threatening to refrain from pivoting to support and unity unless you get to, given what is at stake, is pretty despicable. Contemptible even.
He crosses the line from being an effective spokeperson for a position slightly left of mainstream American Liberalism on economic issues into one who undermines that cause by forcing the rest of us, yes the solid majority of the party, to say well then screw you too.
Yes that position is extremism, is Tea Party style tactics, and those who attempt them deserved to be thrown to the curb and may the door hit his backside hard on the way out.
Yeah, I’ll say this–I’m 100% not a progressive, so I’m happy to see Bernie fail. But I actually look at his campaign and if I was a progressive, I’d be annoyed/maybe even pissed at it.
On one hand, yes, he has done a lot to get progressive ideas more air time in this campaign cycle. On the other, he’s done absolutely nothing to make it a sustained movement. It’s almost like it’s an ego thing for him. He views himself as the one true progressive, so trying to build a movement of like minded politicians isn’t really important to him. Maybe his long experience as an independent in congress hasn’t lead him to believe you need allies in government.
He’s shown himself to have the ability to raise an enormous amount of money. It is traditional for the candidate at the top of a ticket to share the largesse with supporters down ticket–this process generally starts even in the primaries (Hillary has sent money to several congressional campaigns.) Additionally one usually starts to offer endorsements, which Sanders hasn’t done. There are progressive out there right now trying to win seats in congress and from what I can see, they are totally disconnected from the most famous and influential progressive in the country right now because he simply has no interest in them. With his fundraising and media attention Bernie could build a movement “built to last”, which is something you might imagine someone who is 74 years old might be thinking about–what comes “after me.”
But instead he appears 100% focused on doing things his way, and sees no value in establishing a real grass roots movement. That would annoy me were I progressive, especially if you look at how the Republicans are just doing a lot better job of this. The Tea Partiers have 40 seats in Congress and 4-5 in the Senate, at the end of the day the simple fact is if you look at the far right versus the left, the far right is far better ran. And it’s not even close.
Now, even beyond that I think Sanders has ran a bad Presidential campaign, even ignoring his cold shoulder for the rest of the left. How can that be you ask? He’s exceeding expectations! I actually don’t agree, a lot of polls even in the “silent primary” showed Elizabeth Warren and even Joe Biden (a guy who in the past has inspired virtually no serious support in a primary) polling quite well in a primary match up with Hillary. I think Sanders represents that while the majority of the party is okay with Hillary as the nominee, she doesn’t have a strong base of die hard supporters and she has a sizable number of Democrats who view her as a “hold the nose and pull the lever” kind of candidate. So basically Sanders moved into a void, I think largely created by the massive advantages Hillary had during the silent primary in terms of endorsements, funding etc which kept any real other serious contenders out of the race and has combined that with nativism, anti-trade, and other things that play well to an angry part of the Democratic (and moreso the independent) electorate.
Basically if you really think about it, it shouldn’t be surprising he’s doing as well as he has been doing. What should be surprising is how poorly ran his campaign has been. There have been several rounds of “Super” Tuesdays where he focused disproportionately only on the States he thought he could win. Which frankly is stupefying, getting 35% of the vote in Georgia versus the 28% he got, is probably more important than say, the difference between the 48% he was going to get in Massachusetts no matter what and possibly grinding out 2% more in Mass. Even if he had succeeded in winning in Massachusetts it’d probably be less bang for the buck than spreading your resources and running a true 50 state campaign (like Hillary has been.)
The reality is that if he was serious about running for President he wouldn’t act like “wins” are more important than total delegate gains, and if he was trying to start a movement he’d be doing more to actually plant seeds so that movement could grow independent of his Presidential run, instead seeing his run as an incubator for the movement he wishes to create (or purports to.) But instead he’s not done either of those, which make it at least seem to me that this isn’t about creating a movement or about being President, it’s about an old socialist who probably grew up thinking by the time he was an old man society would’ve came round to his way of thinking. Instead Reagan happened and Clinton took the party to the center and that never happened. Now at the end of his career he’s decided it’s time for a big giant F-U to the establishment, and I think it’s really nothing more than that. An angry old man’s prolonged fit.
He does seem to have the finch vote locked in.
But those positions are not “slightly left of mainstream American liberalism”. The majority of Americans - not just liberals or Democrats, mind you, but Americans in general - are in favor of those positions.
You know, it’s been puzzling to me that HRC supporters are so angry about Sanders. You are winning. The numbers aren’t there for Trump to win in the GE, even if many of the Sanders supporters stay home or vote Green/write-in. But at the same time, there is no upside to dissing Sanders or his supporters if you care about growing the party in the future. And yet, you can’t seem to help yourselves.
I think the anger comes from being reminded that you aren’t really progressives after all.
No, it comes from being told they aren’t progressives after all. And not tempering their rhetoric so that whomever wins the primary, they have an easier time beating whomever the GOP puts up. Because in the end, we want campaign finance reform and we want reproductive rights protected and we want to protect civil rights and we want fair and non-racist immigration reform and we want EPA protections - and we aren’t getting that no matter what GOP candidate gets elected. But we will get that no matter which Democratic candidate gets elected.
And if we get an increase in minimum wage and single payer healthcare and more restrictions on banking - that would be good…but we at least want to hold the line.
For Bernie to win the Democratic nomination, and to win the general if he gets that far, the movement he has started has to continue to grow rapidly. He may not need to beat Hillary in the total delegates including the Super Dels, but he has to match her in the earned delegates, and the movement has to be on a clear upswing, and his polling showing him to win bigger against GOP candidates than Hillary has to remain strong, and probably improve from the single digit advantage he shows now. This movement has to show the strength to bring in Republican voters, and he has to show a clear edge in the blue and purple states over Hillary. But even if he winds up with the Democratic nomination he won’t prevail in the general unless his ideas for social and political reform have strong legs with the general population.
Bernie is running on principle, not hype. He engenders a great deal of respect because he has steadily championed the same principles throughout his career. He’s flipped a few times in minor respects as a politician, but charges of hypocrisy won’t stick to him. He is considered honest and trustworthy by friend and foe alike. However, he is a square peg in the political process, something that tends to gather notice, but not votes in actual elections. His only chance is circumstantial, the American people have to see the Social Democratic model as a real solution for him to win. I don’t get the feeling that is happening, but I would surely like it to become the reality.
The vast majority of comments I see on Facebook (usually in the comments section of NY Times, WaPo, or The Guardian) that are negative are Sanders supporters. For every 8 or 9 “I’ll vote Trump before Shillary!!1!” I’ll see a “Sanders can’t make it and should drop out”.
The usual “anecdotes =/= data” applies.
You are so off base in so many ways that it is not even funny.
First of all, I do not identify as a “progressive” and do not want to be so identified. Gaws no. When I label myself I prefer to think of myself as being just slightly left of center and am always shocked when those big inventory quizzes (like political compass, which I just did again) tell me that I am far left on economic issues and fairly far towards the libertarian side as well. I personally pride myself on disagreeing with those of every leaning depending on the exact issue.
I would take being called a “progressive” as an insult. I am not so easily pigeon-holed. I’d rather be called a DINO than a “progressive” as I find passing tests of ideological purity offensive.
Yes, the odds are against a Trump victory. One can look at the experts’ assessments of his chances of winning a Trump-Clinton match-up as between 20 to 25% as, “only 20 to 25%.” Or you can react to that like I do: 20 to 25%!!! A one in five chance of a major catastrophic event hitting our country?! That is an intolerably high risk to live with let alone to be blase about.
Do I get angry at those who play with increasing that risk any more than it already is? Damn straight I do. Any risk greater than zero of that outcome is too high.
Meanwhile despite your claims of endemic anger about Sanders I have seen no booing of him at Clinton events … and lots of booing Clinton at Sanders events. I have not seen or heard very many Clinton supporters saying that they would stay home rather than soil themselves voting for Sanders (a small handful) but yes huge amounts of that and much much worse from quite a few on the Sanders side. Personal invective has been almost (no, not completely) exclusively coming from Sanders supporters against Clinton and those of us who support her.
Yes truth be told whether or not Sanders endorses or not will likely be of little impact by that point. Those who have had their hatred of Clinton reinforced throughout the campaign won’t turn on a dime because he suddenly says so at that point, and those who know that the actual space between Clinton and Sanders on goals and aspirations is small while the harms of any of the GOP possibilities is immense and will work to elect her anyway will do so with or without the blessing of the personality.
Still, even if the increased risk is slight it is too much to accept.
This. It’s Sanders’ supporters who are doing the dissing, not Hillary’s.
I like Bernie. I like his policy stands. But I am also a political pragmatist, and very little of what he wants can actually get done.
In the current climate, true. But in the unlikely event that Sanders were to win, the climate would almost certainly be different. Some progress might be possible.
And crap. Just also took the Pew Typology quiz and it place me as solidly “solid liberal” … I really think I am more centrist.
Talk to me when the Republicans don’t hold a virtual hammerlock on any progress whatsoever (which could, quite possibly, be early next year). Until then, nottachance in Hell.
Progressives and people who have any sense at all will vote for Hillary. If they don’t, then they have no right to complain when Obamacare gets thrown out and they get a more conservative supreme court and more voter suppression.
I used to believe in centrists, but that’s because such creatures once existed. I now can’t think of many issues it’s possible to find a centrist position on. Those who don’t take a side are too ignorant too be labeled as anything.
Well, that little bird on the podium yesterday may be bringing a message of support. “Hi, Bernie. The birds support you!” 
Hey, that could be good support. They could swarm and take massive shits on Trump and his campaign whenever they’re outside!
That may be a lack of intellectual rigor being applied on your part, to be honest.
I can think of centrist issues on a lot of things.
- Fracking
Far Right: No regulation of fracking liquids, unlimited permitting schemes, State laws preventing local governments from banning fracking, State laws that can mandate property owners sign fracking leases if they are “holdouts” among their neighbors.
Centrist: Strict regulation of fracking liquids, rules on well-site cleanliness and procedures. Allowance of local government bans on fracking, more robust home-owner rights on agreeing or disagreeing to leases.
Far Left: Complete ban.
There’s even more granularity than that, to be honest.
- Free Trade Agreements
Far Right: Unlimited support for free trade, with very few qualifications.
Centrist: Build in more protections for domestic industries when signing free trade deals. For example look to how Germany and Japan both have been involved in free trade agreements but also promote policies that enhance the competitiveness of domestic producers without running afoul of provisions in most free trade treaties that prohibit certain classes of subsidy and etc.
Far Left: No free trade, hardcore protectionism.
- Minimum Wage Laws
Far Right: Repeal minimum wage at the Federal level, or legislatively block its increase.
Centrist: Allow minimum wage to grow, indexed to inflation, but leave the imposition of certain higher minimum wages up to local governments as they are best equipped to respond to unique economic conditions and cost of living in their locality.
Far Left: Schemes promulgating a guaranteed basic income for all.
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You didn’t address my point about those positions being mainstream.
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You admit you are angry, so I’m not off base in addressing that. I didn’t say “endemic”; I don’t go to my Facebook page unless someone dies, and I was mainly speaking of this board, and specifically to your post which struck me as unnecessary and counter-productive hostility to mainstream ideas (see point 1 above).
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Okay, I didn’t know you consider “progressive” to be an insult. I’ll make a note of that for future reference. What else is there to say? Enjoy your hippie punching.