So for all the folks who like Bernie better but are reluctantly voting for Hillary because of the alleged “electability” factor, a couple of things: 1. If everyone who would rather have Bernie, votes for Bernie, we’ll get Bernie, 2. Bernie’s been getting elected and re-elected for 35 years (and from a fairly conservative state, no less), 3. Hillary’s national lead over Sanders is all gone now, and 4. He beats every Republican contender by larger margins than Hillary in poll after poll after poll for months now.
The poll also suggests that, contrary to widespread belief, Sanders may be the more electable of the two Democrats. In head-to-head matchups against each of the three Republican frontrunners, Sanders had a 10-point lead over Donald Trump, a four-point lead over Sen. Ted Cruz , and was tied with Sen. Marco Rubio . Clinton, in contrast, edged Trump by just five points, tied Cruz, and trailed Rubio by seven points.
As for the “pragmatism” argument, I (obviously) don’t see it that way. First, because Hillary isn’t simply pragmatic, she’s Right Wing, it’s not so much pragmatism as it is concurrence with the Republican mindset on the important issues that will be coming up. “Pragmatism” is just the latest spin/frame for “Blue Dog,” “Conservadem,” “Neo-Liberal,” and they’re all the same thing: right wing. On everything from war to the social safety net, she leans heavily to the right. Heavily. She won’t even commit to not cutting Social Security benefits. In fact, she’s on the record for being willing to cut benefits and possibly even turn what’s now a retirement and disability insurance program into a means-tested Welfare program. That’s the kind of “thing” she’d “get done” because Republican’s will be more than happy to gut Social Security. Is that what y’all really want?
Second, I see the notion of “pragmatism” as regards Hillary, as her already laying down her sword before she even enters the arena. To me, that’s not a leader. We need a fighter to protect our rights against the party that has spent the last four decades gutting them with the help of Democrats. President Obama has spent the bulk of his presidency being a “pragmatist” in an effort to get anything accomplished with a recalcitrant Congress. And I’ll be the first to admit that I studied him harder than most and understood clearly that that’s exactly what we’d be getting and a big reason why I supported him, where (I think it’s safe to say) most others had hoped he’d be a Progressive hero and are sorely disappointed that he hasn’t been. So if Democrats are disillusioned with Obama’s “pragmatism,” why settle for more of the same from Hillary?
However … the one time President Obama was wildly successful in getting something done against Republican obstruction was when the Republicans were threatening to shut down the government over the debt ceiling. He scheduled a national address, stood at a podium addressing the nation and called on us to pick up our phones and get on our computers and demand our Representatives do their jobs and do what “the People” want. We slammed their phones and servers so hard, systems were crashing all across the country and we got them to move on passing the debt ceiling increase.
That’s the kind of political revolution Bernie is talking about: keeping citizens involved in the process and inspiring us to force our legislators to act in our interests, not those of corporations and Wall Street. And we can do it. We’ve proven that.
Of course it would be more helpful to either candidate if we had better Progressive representation in Congress, but is that even possible? I contend that Hillary will not be an inspiration for people to flock to the polls in November to usher in a more Progressive Congress and vote for down-ticket candidates. She’s not even thrilling people to come to her rallies. But Bernie has people “fired up,” as it were, so much so that there is a running list of Progressive candidates who support his agenda that his supporters are working hard to spread the word about, donate to, and vote for in their districts. Will it be easy with the way the districts are currently gerrymandered? Of course not. But we can make progress. There’s a sea change happening in this country and I believe it’s going to move people into action with the right leader calling on us to take part and keeping us involved.
President Obama moved the Overton window slightly to the Left with the Affordable Care Act and the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, but he left us vulnerable economically by not doing nearly enough to rein in Wall Street. We need the next president to continue that movement, not stagnate us where we’ve sat for the past six years. FDR, JFK and LBJ all moved mountains for Progressive causes and societal advancement, not with “pragmatism” or “no we can’t” attitudes, but with determination and the public will to get it done.
We have the will; we need that leader.
And despite the perception that Bernie’s proposals are “too far out of the mainstream,” they’re not. Not even a little. Not even among Republicans!
More and More Americans Agree With Bernie Sanders, and Not Just Those Who Identify With the Left
Although pegged as a fringe candidate, Sanders’ views are surprisingly mainstream.
Polls show that Americans are upset with widening inequality, the political influence of big business, and declining living standards. Public opinion is generally favorable toward greater government activism to address poverty, inequality, opportunity, and climate change.
Most Americans worry that government has been captured by the powerful and wealthy. They want a government that serves the common good. They also want to reform government to make it more responsive and accountable.
On those matters—both broad principles and specific policy prescriptions—Sanders is in sync with the vast majority of Americans.
Big Business
· About three-quarters (74 percent) of Americans—including 84 percent of Democrats, 72 percent of independents, and 62 percent of Republicans—believe that corporations have too much influence on American life and politics today, according to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll. In contrast, only 37 percent think that labor unions exercise too much influence.
· The Pew Research Center discovered that 60 percent of Americans—including 75 percent of Democrats—believed that “the economic system in this country unfairly favors the wealthy.”
· Fifty-eight percent of Americans said they would support breaking up “big banks like Citigroup,” a key plank of Sanders’ platform and the goal of a bill that Sanders sponsored in the Senate.
· Seventy-three percent of Americans favor tougher rules for Wall Street financial companies, versus 17 percent who oppose stronger regulation.
· Sixty-four percent of Americans strongly or somewhat favor regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, factories and cars and requiring utilities to generate more power from “clean” low-carbon sources.
Progressive Taxation
· More than three-quarters of Americans (79 percent) think that wealthy people don’t pay their fair share of taxes, while 82 percent believe that some corporations don’t pay their fair share of taxes.
· Sixty-eight percent of Americans favor raising taxes on people earning more than $1 million per year, including 87 percent of Democrats, 65 percent of independents, and 53 percent of Republicans.
Inequality and Poverty
· A strong majority (66 percent) say that wealth should be more evenly divided and that it is a problem that should be addressed urgently.
· Ninety-two percent of Americans want a society with far less income disparity than currently exists in the United States. …
· Sixty-nine percent of Americans—including 90 percent of Democrats, 69 percent of independents, and 45 percent of Republicans—believe that the government should help reduce the gap between the rich and everyone else. Eighty-two percent of Americans—including 94 percent of Democrats, 83 percent of independents, and 64 percent of Republicans—think the government should help reduce poverty.
Money in Politics
· Eighty-four percent of Americans think that money has too much influence in politics. Slightly more Americans (85 percent) want an overhaul of our campaign finance system
· Seventy-eight percent of Americans think that campaign spending by outside groups not affiliated with candidates should be limited by law.
· A majority of Americans (54 percent) believe that money given to political candidates is not a form of free speech protected by the First Amendment. In other words, they disagree with the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling.
Minimum Wage and Workers’ Rights
· A recent poll by Hart Research Associates found that 75 percent of Americans (including 53 percent of Republicans) support an increase in the federal minimum wage to $12.50 by 2020. Sixty-three percent of Americans support an even greater increase in the minimum wage to $15.00 by 2020.
· Eighty percent of Americans favor requiring employers to offer paid leave to parents of new children and employees caring for sick family members. Even more (85 percent) favor requiring employers to offer paid leave to employees who are ill.
· A significant majority of Americans support the right of workers to unionize, despite several decades of corporate-sponsored anti-union propaganda. Eighty-two percent believe that factory and manufacturing workers should have the right to unionize. A vast majority support the right to unionize for transportation workers (74 percent), police and firefighters (72 percent), public school teachers (71 percent), workers in supermarkets and retail sales (68 percent), and fast food workers (62 percent).
**Health Care and Social Security **
· Over 50 percent of Americans (including one-quarter of Republicans and nearly 80 percent of Democrats) say they support a single-payer “Medicare for All” approach to health insurance, something Sanders has long advocated. Only 36 percent oppose the idea. 12 percent are neutral.
· Seventy-one percent Americans support a public option, which would give individuals the choice of buying healthcare through Medicare or private insurers. …
· The Gallup poll found that 67 percent of Americans want to lift the income cap on Social Security to require higher-income workers to pay Social Security taxes on all of their wages. …
Higher Education
· More than three-quarters (79 percent) of Americans think that education beyond high school is not affordable for everyone in the U.S. who needs it. Seventy-seven percent believe that higher education institutions should reduce tuition and fees, while 59 percent and 55 percent respectively agree that state governments and the federal government should provide more assistance. …
Given that this is the temperature of the vast majority of the public, why shouldn’t we elect a president who says he’ll fight for us to get it as opposed to one who’s telling us right out of the gate that she won’t fight for this stuff? When did the presidency become about what they’re willing to do for us and not what we want? I mean, if we’re just going to throw up our hands and say, “We can’t get it anyway, so may as well let Wall Street and corporate CEOs continue to run the country,” why bother to have elections anymore?
We seem to go through these cycles in America where the wealthy elite claw their way into power, destroy us economically, get exposed for the danger their greed is for society and we usher in new leadership to reverse course for our protection and security. We thrive for a few decades with working programs like tuition-free public universities (and not just in California and New York), strong unions helping raise wages and working standards across the board, the GI Bill, etc., and then the greedy bastards buy themselves a few presidencies and screw us over again. It’s been nearly half a century of destruction of the middle and working class; the pendulum is swinging back now, and rightfully so.
Millennials are fed up and they’ll never vote for Hillary. New Hampshire bore that out. And don’t be too quick to dismiss them, as they’ve now surpassed us Baby Boomers as a voting constituency.
It finally happened: This year, millennials surpassed baby boomers as the largest share of the U.S.'s voting-age population.
The U.S. now has 88 million millennials, people born 1981 to 2000. They are more than the sum of their student loans. This generation has tremendous political clout: Three of 10 voting-age Americans are millennials, and more members of the generation reach voting age each day.
A by-the-numbers look shows a generation poised to take over. Politicians ignore millennials at their peril.
Bernie’s now tied with Hillary in Nevada polls, too, by the way.
So come on, let’s take our country back from the Oligarchs who’ve effed it up so miserably, not hand it back to the same ones who did the bulk of the damage through deregulation, gutting safety net programs and imprisoning half the African American population — the Clintons.
I’m from Missouri. This state is probably going to give its electoral votes to Ted Cruz given the chance, and by a greater margin than Romney had. I have to push that aside.