What successes?
And even if you’re right, that harsh, mandatory sentencing laws and the crackdown on drugs did have some successes, if it’s not successful anymore, it’s still time to change.
One doesn’t just dogmatically cling to something because it once was a good idea or accomplished some good at some point. Of course “the way the wind seems to be blowing NOW” is important! If something stopped working, it should be changed.
Most of us agree on making some changes now. What we don’t agree on is apologizing for sharply reducing the scourge of violent crime.
In a rally in Los Angeles, Sanders had his newly-hired young black female press secretary introduce him and he said that attacking institutional racism was one of his primary goals as a candidate. Also since the BLM dustups, Sanders changed his website to include a racial justice platform.
Maybe - just maybe - those who were bringing the issue to the attention of Sanders were just young and used to dealing with people who would just throw them out (like what happened recently with Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton) so they did like a lot of young, passionate people do - they got overly excited.
But they made a point and Sanders listened and he’s made changes because of it.
Now, some detractors will scream about how Sanders kowtowed to protesters and how horrible that is.
But pay them no mind.
Sanders was fighting for racial justice decades ago. Possibly living in and representing a constituency that was 95% white caused him to forget about that fight, but those protesters didn’t cause him to change as much as remember what he always stood for.
You have a citation that the war on drugs and mandatory sentencing is the cause of any reduction of violent crime?
It’s not exactly controversial that harsher sentencing has reduced crime. Hard not to reduce crime when we’re not letting violent criminals out without serving their time, which is what we used to do.
I cited specifically that the War on Drugs does not allocate federal money towards violent crime arrests/suppression, only drug arrests and related activity.
We agree on the war on drugs, except for it being racist. Nanny statish, yes. Racist, no, at least not in intent. In terms of how it was actually enforced, definitely racist.
Ending welfare. Because that’s not for the middle class. We could probably read the party’s* opposition to single payer *as part of this as well.
Dude, you’re in a Bernie Sanders thread. That man’s career is based on calling the Democrats useless and wrongheaded, then working with them out of pragmatism, because his own movement has largely been successful only in Vermont. So far.
We actually have econometric data comparing laissez-faire to New Dealism. Guess which one is more economically prosperous and stable. 
Do violent crime statistics count rapes of inmates by prison guards? Just asking questions.
That depends on how you define laissez-faire and how you define New Dealism. Does it count the parts of the New Deal that were struck down? The parts that went away after WWII? Does it count the Great Society? If you’re arguing that we’d be more prosperous without Medicare, Medicaid, and welfare…
I believe that Nixon dismembered the Great Society.
A huge point. Hillary’s people gave a video of her meeting with #BLM after the rally on August 11 to the media. Is the Clinton campaign playing catch up to Bernie? Seems that way.
Gotta admit, the video makes Clinton look good to me. She was right about nearly everything she said.
I’m not so sure. It looked a bit like a page out of Veep with the staffer telling them how little time she had. The “meeting” wasn’t a sit down, it was a honk and wave. And substantively It certainly wasn’t anything that black voters haven’t already heard. Although with her getting a little testy I was happy for the spark.
At least with Bernie he’s sat down with them and their input has given rise to his racial justice platform. Hillary will have to do some laps to get to where Bernie is at this point
Bernie doesn’t have the Clinton administration in his history. Hillary can flip flop on issues from those years, but she can’t allow BLM activists to call her husband’s policies racist. And frankly I doubt many average African-Americans would regard his policies as racist. They love the guy. BLM basically comparing him to George Wallace isn’t going to hurt Clinton with African-Americans, it’s going to hurt BLM with African-Americans.
I have been given to understand that Clinton lost some grouond with African Americans with the Welfare Bill.
Yeah, I have no idea where you got the idea that BLM thinks Hillary’s or Bill’s policies are racist. The Civil rights act is what Hills and Bill hang their hats on, which is where most Americans find themselves. Unfortunately it isn’t enough in this age of killing unarmed black persons for traffic violations. A racial justice platform has to go further to protect basic human rights.
Many communities have this or have started this, but Bernie’s campaign spells it out. He wants to demilitarize police forces, have body cameras on every police officer, ban prisons for profit, expand early voting, restore the voting rights act, invest in community policing, increase civilian oversight of police, re-enfranchise those who have lost their right to vote from a felony conviction, require public reports for all police shootings and those in police custody, and end the war on drugs.