Bernie Sanders Barnstorms, Delivers Great Message

Link:

Bernie Sanders barnstorms Bay Area with socialist populist message - San Jose Mercury News

Excerpt:

Sanders on Monday rained fire down once again upon Republicans' budget proposal, noting that it would kick 27 million Americans out of health care coverage by abolishing the nation's health-care insurance law and scaling back Medicaid; make college education harder to afford; and do nothing to help 40 million Americans living below the poverty line.

The GOP has been "brilliant" about "convincing middle-class Americans that Wall Street and greed are good for you but Medicaid and Social Security are bad for you," he said, mostly at the behest of a "billionaire class who want more and more for themselves and less and less for working families."

Sanders said his current favorite statistic comes from Forbes' list of the nation's richest people: America's 14 richest individuals have expanded their wealth by $157 billion in the past two years -- more than is held by the bottom 40 percent of Americans, many of whom now work longer hours for lower wages. "I don't think anyone thinks that's acceptable."

Sanders' plan includes creating good-paying jobs by rebuilding public infrastructure, raising the minimum wage, overturning the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling that has brought a torrent of new money into politics, and breaking up banking institutions that are so big that they wield outsize, dangerous power over the economy and politics.

Sanders is particularly incensed at Republicans' repeated, continuing efforts to abolish Obamacare.

Their billionaire benefactors "believe we should move toward the elimination of virtually every government program established in the last 80 years that protects the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor," he said. "But when people see government doing something for them, I think they're going to come out and vote."

"If I run, I will run to win," he said.

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Fantine said:

I wish him well in the primary but hope he doesn't decide to launch a third party challenge if he loses, playing the role of "spoiler" for Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.

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I agree.

Hopefully if she is nominated she will choose a dynamic, articulate progressive as her running mate--Newark mayor Cory Booker?

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I don't consider Cory Booker a progressive. He is in the pocket of Wall Street and big business. Remember when he was on Meet the Press, in theory as a surrogate for Obama, and attacked the Obama campaign for attacking Romney on economic issues?

Clinton may choose him, but he isn't an olive branch to the Sanders/Warren wing of the party. She'd be choosing him for other reasons if she chose him, I think.

Also, there are practical concerns I have with him. Booker has made some prominent gaffes. I think we're already got New Jersey and New York in the bag anyway, so he doesn't deliver those states either. I'm also not sure he helps African-American turnout levels nationally- we just had an African American President for eight years, an African-American VP candidate isn't going to make a blip with the type of voters who would otherwise stay home (Obviously, that isn't argument against selecting a black VP in general, it's an argument against selecting someone if one is doing it expecting he will help deliver the African-American vote to a greater extent than we usually get it).

The stakes are too high to allow a spoiler to throw an election to the Republicans, especially since so many are radicals

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I agree. I'll take a reasonable centrist like Clinton over any of the current likely Republican candidates and am not likely to support a third party candidate after having seen what happened in 2000, unless a third party candidate could demonstrate that he or she had a chance to win (15-20% in the polls and leading in several states, minimum. Basically Perot '92 level support plus, because Perot didn't win any states.). However, I am extremely unlikely to vote for her in a primary. If no one else is on the ballot in the primary, I will write in Bernie Sanders' name or something (Hopefully *somebody* runs against her. Um, somebody other than Jim Webb, with due respect to Senator Webb, who of course has every right to run.).

Fantine said:

I see one of Clinton's advantages is her ability to attract Wall Street money--Lord knows Democrats will need to attract a ton of it to counteract the damage the Supreme Court has inflicted on our political process.

I think she will be as liberal as she thinks she can be should she win, depending on how wide her coattails are.

If she can eke out a majority in the Senate (and improve the imbalance in the House) she can be more progressive.

Her cabinet appointments would make a difference, too.

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Some people assume that Hillary Clinton is an economic and foreign policy progressive who stakes out claims to the center and the right in order to get campaign contributions and votes, but I am not sure I believe that. What if she actually believes what she says? She might use her political capital if she wins big to do something like make unacceptable reforms to Social Security that are better than what the Republicans would do, but worse than the status quo, because she may actually believe in that (ala The Great Compromise Obama and Boehner were discussing) and so on and so forth. She isn't a Cheney/McCain level hawk, but she is definitely to the right of Obama, and I'm not sure that she doesn't believe in what she says.

There really isn't a record of Hilary speaking out in favor of progressive economic or foreign policy causes, and there is a record of her favoring centrist to center-right ones.

Before she embarked on a political career or met her husband, she was a member of the Wellesley Young Republicans. A bit later, she left that club, but described herself as "a mind conservative and a heart liberal". She worked on Nelson Rockefeller's campaign for President and attended the 1968 Republican national convention (You know, when most progressives her age were protesting in the streets of Chicago where the Democratic National Convention was being held because they deemed it's candidate too conservative- she was at a Republican convention that was nominating Richard Nixon). Her senior thesis was a negative critique of Saul Alinsky. I'm cherry-picking a little there, because she did also support some Democrats and the like, but I think a lot of people don't know this about her.

Now, normally I wouldn't go back that far in someone's history to try to determine their political views. People do and say a lot of things in college, and their minds change over time. But the fact of the matter is, in my view, her entire political record taken as a whole is as a centrist on economics and foreign policy, which matches her earlier views before being in the political spotlight. When I hear "Oh, she actually a secret progressive. You can count on her to be as progressive as possible.", I just see no evidence of that. I don't consider her as really being on our side. I do consider her as being better than anyone in the Republican field, though, which isn't hard. She might have more in common with the Dwight Eisenhower than an FDR, and, actually, she seems more hawkish than the General in many respects.

Now, Eisenhower wasn't a bad President. He might be the best Republican President of the 20th century. But he was not a progressive. He was a moderate. And that's what I see Clinton as. At best. In an era when the Republican Party is so far to the right that they need a telescope to see even what used to be called "conservative" and to whom centrism is just sort of a rumor they don't understand and probably would categorize as "socialism", she'll do in a pinch, but I don't want to see her march to the nomination uncontested.

If she's progressive anywhere, it's on the "culture war" issues, and that's probably where I am least progressive overall, and which I believe the President has the least ability to effect these days in any event. So, her ideology is a bad fit for me in a lot of ways.

Remember, a lot of the Republican criticism of her in the 90s was that she didn't want to play a traditional First Lady role and bake cookies. To them, that made her a radical liberal. That's not a radical liberal in reality, though, that's just someone who doesn't have a 19th century view of gender roles.

mark46 said:

With regard to entitlement reform, something will happen in the next 14 years or so. There will be minor changes to Social Security, but nothing that AARP won't accept.

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We ought to simply extend the payroll tax to all earned income and then we would need to make no changes to benefits or the retirement age. With the wealthy so much better off than they ever were before and the GDP in inflation-adjusted dollars 20x as big in 2000 and as it was in 1900, we should even be able to afford to just institute a minimum income for everyone, even if they are retired or disabled or just can't find a job. There is no reason not to do it. We just have to get our priorities straight. People matter more than missiles.

My BOTTOM LINE is that the Democratic Party made a huge mistake in 2008 by nominating Obama instead of Clinton.

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I voted for Obama over Clinton in 2008 and I'd do it again. Obama isn't perfect either, but I preferred him to Clinton. And Clinton isn't perfect, but I'd prefer her to Jeb Bush or whomever the Republicans will put up. I've kind of had to adjust to the idea that the plutocrats control things and won't let progressive ideas be popular or progressive candidates gain traction. But I should at least be able to have a progressive to vote for in the freaking primary. The idea that progressives will get no voice in even internal Democratic Party primary politics is very grating. Apparently the country's politics are in some ways narrowing to just the far-right or the center-right.

And, the thing is, that narrowing is artificial. Look what the banks are doing to Elizabeth Warren. They won't accept any real challenge to their political agenda. And the plutocrats propagandize with not only political ads, but through their ownership of the media. Public opinion is more progressive than a lot of people think on some of these issues, and would be even more progressive if people weren't bombarded by false information and slanted framing of issues. Like, why is it the debate when it comes to social programs is always how much to cut or whether to cut and not how much to increase or whether to increase? Why don't we even talk about bringing back the old welfare system we abolished in the 90s in light of the increasing levels of poverty and declining middle class in this country? It's not even talked about.

mark46 said:

With regard to your implied idea that everyone should be eligible even if they don't have any intention of working, there IS INDEED good reasons not to do this.

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A few things worth noting on that front:

1. Our economy is managed to ensure at least 3% unemployment at any given time, because businesses feel that when the unemployment level drops below that, they can't get people to take crap jobs for almost no money, and employees have more leverage in contract negotiations. I don't really like that as economic policy, but it's the way both Republicans and Democrats have done things for a very long time. If we're going to do that, then we need to take into account that we're always going to have unemployed folks who could be working and aren't working through no fault of their own because we rig the system so that demand for jobs always exceeds the supply, and that it is probably a moral imperative to take care of the people who are unemployed because of the system.

2. I think there are a lot of people with health isssues who can't get disability and yet can't get or keep jobs. For example, people with undiagnosed mental conditions, or people with a lot of physical problems that don't rise to the level of what you'd need to get disability, but do kind of ensure they can't dig ditches for a living and could only do select jobs, making a job search much harder than it would be for most, especially if they don't have college degrees or high enough IQs to be good at white collar stuff. About 60% of disability applicants are turned down, and some people don't even make it through the byzantine process of getting all the medical stuff they need and jumping through all the hurdles and paperwork in the first place. Some portion of those people probably are disabled, or close enough. Bringing back welfare would provide a safety net for those type of folks.

3. I think there are a decent number of folks just short of retirement age who have been in the work force for 30-40 years and wind up getting fired or laid off, and don't have many realistic job options. Employers don't want to hire 60 year olds unless they are very, very good at what they do because they figure the person won't be with them long before they retire. You also have situations similar to that like someone who has been a roofer or whatever and has reached the age where he has trouble doing it physically, but is not yet 67 and able to retire, and isn't a realistic candidate for job retraining or to start a career in a new field at their age (Though we should offer more job training, I feel).

4. I'm generally opposed to letting people die in the gutter even if they are just lazy or something. Let them at least buy some noddles and rice and stuff and have a hole in the wall apartment.

5. Interesting thought for the future. We get better at automation constantly, right? Technology improves and computers and machinery carries a much larger load less expensively. Imagine a McDonald's where you order on a touch screen and the process of making the food is all automated with robotics. You might need a person on site to just oversee all that make sure the machines are working right and that people don't jump the counter and steal Big Macs or screw with other people's food, but you don't need a team of people like today. Eventually, we may reach a situation where there are only jobs for 50% of the people who want a job, or let's say a higher figure like we only have jobs for 80% of people, possibly. And it won't be just a bad economy anymore- it'll be that computers and machinery really can do the work better and more inexpensively, and those jobs aren't coming back no matter what the economy does. What do you do with the other 20-50% of people who want to work and can work, but where the jobs simply don't exist? Probably we need some sort of social program so they can get by in the future- or a plan to force employers divide the remaining jobs more ways (i.e. Instead of 10 40 hour a week jobs, 20 20 hour a week jobs) and still pay people enough to get by. I think this is a real issue that is going to develop as time passes.

So, I guess that I am no longer a card-carrying progressive. I like the idea of Bush's drug system for seniors, Romney's medical care system (instead of single payer), greatly increasing income credits (to give more money to workers), and even workfare (requiring those receiving welfare to be in school, taking care of children, or seeking a job. Of course, I do believe in a progressive income tax (and a lower corporate tax after getting rid of many loopholes).

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You don't sound like a progressive, but you do sound like a Democrat. I think you're about where Hillary Clinton is on those issues.

My economic views are further to the left than the Democratic Party in general. I wouldn't want people to assume I'm sort of speaking for them just because I am a Democrat. The Democratic Party, according to polling, is made up of roughly half self-identified liberals, and half self-identified moderates. It's sort of an alliance against the far right, because the Republican Party has become very hostile to moderates. A lot of regular people and politicians who were Eisenhower Republicans in ages past recognize that their party won't field candidates like that nationally these days, or locally in many regions, whereas the Democratic Party has moved to the center. A lot of politicians who were Republicans 20 years ago have switched parties. The Democratic Party is a big-tent party now, whereas the Republican Party has ceased to be one.