Are you a capitalist Bernie? No. Im a democratic socialist.

[heyjude]

Why Bernie Sanders isn’t going to be president, in five words

Here's an exchange from Bernie Sanders's appearance on "Meet the Press" on Sunday:



And, in those five words, Sanders showed why — no matter how much energy there is for him on the liberal left — he isn't getting elected president.

Why? Because Democrat or Republican (or independent), capitalism remains a pretty popular concept — especially when compared to socialism. A 2011 Pew Research Center survey showed that 50 percent of people had a favorable view of capitalism, while 40 percent had an unfavorable one. Of socialism, just three in 10 had a positive opinion, while 61 percent saw it in a negative light.

Wrote Pew in a memo analyzing the results:

Of these terms, socialism is the more politically polarizing — the reaction is almost universally negative among conservatives, while generally positive among liberals. While there are substantial differences in how liberals and conservatives think of capitalism, the gaps are far narrower.

In addition, a recent Gallup poll showed that half of Americans said they would not vote for a socialist. It was, in fact, the least acceptable characteristic tested, behind Muslim and atheist.

6bdstjdogu2cb2zu35rrmw (3)
[Could a socialist actually be elected president?]

Yes, I am aware that some more recent polling — Internet-based, it's worth noting — suggests that socialism is getting more and more popular, particularly among young people. And that, as a recent New Yorker profile of Sanders makes clear, many of his supporters are drawn to his unwillingness to abandon the term. Here's a key passage:

Sanders has been known as a democratic socialist for decades. This didn’t matter much to Kiley or York, or to most other Sanders supporters I met during the next few weeks; mainly, they were impressed that he hadn’t shed the term. York thought that, because of Sanders and his “social-media-driven fans,” socialism was “getting a bit of a P.R. makeover.” She noted that sites like Reddit and Twitter were circulating videos of “Bernie explaining why he identifies as a socialist, and what it means to him, in a really positive light.” She added, “The word had a retro connection to Communism and was originally thrown at him as a damning label by his opponents. But for his supporters it isn’t a deterrent.”

But even in that Internet survey and even among millennials, the group most inclined to see socialism favorably, capitalism is still preferred by more people. And, people who are drawn to Sanders — at least so far — aren't even a majority of Democrats, much less the entire country.

The simple political fact is that if Sanders did ever manage to win the Democratic presidential nomination — a long shot but far from a no shot at this point — Republicans would simply clip Sanders's answer to Todd above and put it in a 30-second TV ad. That would, almost certainly, be the end of Sanders's viability in a general election.

Americans might be increasingly aware of the economic inequality in the country and increasingly suspicious of so-called vulture capitalism — all of which has helped fuel Sanders's rise. But we are not electing someone who is an avowed socialist to the nation's top political job. Just ain't happening.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a White House contender in 2016, is known for his stances on budget issues and war. Here are his takes on Obamacare, Social Security and more. (Julie Percha/The Washington Post)

[downtoearth]

Why are some of my friends so into him?! They're all women too, and mostly professional families who are upper-middle class, who I know who love him - is it really just the economics stuff? Nothing he's proposed has sounded so different - I mean Obama is working on free community college and helped pull us out of the economic depression that we saw spiral during Bush.

As to who is following him, really? I read this today and it was surprising to me that it's in the heartland and across blue-collar US also that they want a Bernie in the White House:

washingtonspectator.org/bernie-sanders-populist-movement/ and reprinted on Salon here www.salon.com/2015/10/12/the_medias_lying_to_you_about_bernie_sanders_this_is_why_a_socialist_can_win_the_fox_loving_red_states/


Slow Burn: Bernie Sanders Ignites a Populist Movement

Conservatives drawn to a socialist senator

Nate Silver has the Bernie Sanders campaign figured out. Ignore what happens in Iowa and New Hampshire, the “data-driven” prognostication wizard wrote back in July, when Sanders was polling a healthy 30 percent to Clinton’s 46 percent in both contests. That’s only, Silver says, because “Democratic caucus-goers in Iowa and Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire are liberal and white, and that’s the core of Sanders’ support.”

Silver has a chart. It shows that when you multiply the number of liberals and whites among state electorates, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Iowa rank first, second, and third. Texas is near the bottom—a place where Bernie Sanders should feel about as welcome as a La Raza convention at the Alamo, right?

I have a new friend who begs to differ.

It’s July 20, and my airplane seat mate asks what brought me to Texas. He is a construction company sales executive from Houston. He’s watching Fox News on his cell phone. He tells me he considers himself a conservative. I tell him I’m a political reporter covering the Bernie Sanders campaign. He perks up: “I like what I’ve heard from him. Kind of middle of the road.”

Eleven days later, I’m at a Bernie Sanders house party in the depressed steel town of Griffith, Indiana, in a state that places in the bottom quartile on Silver’s chart. I approach a young man in his twenties wearing a thrift store T-shirt. I ask him what brings him here tonight.

“I’m just helping out my friends because they asked me to help out,” he tells me. He adds that he’s a conservative: “But I approve of some of the stuff that Bernie stands for. Like appealing to more than just the one percent and just trying to give everybody a leg up who’s needing it these days.” Data-driven analysis is only as good as the categories by which you sift the information. If you’ve already decided that “liberals” are the people who prefer locally sourced arugula to eating at McDonald’s, or are the people who don’t watch Fox News, it is a reasonable conclusion that there aren’t enough “liberals” out there to elect Bernie Sanders. Yet political categories shift. One of the things the best politicians do is work to shift them.

Sanders has been extraordinarily clear about the kind of shift he’d like to effect: Republicans “divide people on gay marriage. They divide people on abortion. They divide people on immigration. And what my job is, and it’s not just in blue states. . . [is] to bring working people together around an economic agenda that works. People are sick and tired of establishment politics; they are sick and tired of a politics in which candidates continue to represent the rich and the powerful.”

The theory that economic populism unites voters is hardly new. Lyndon Johnson, in New Orleans and about to lose the South to Barry Goldwater in 1964, expressed it in one of the most remarkable campaign speeches in history. A Southern Democratic politician was on his deathbed, Johnson said. “He was talking about the economy and what a great future we could have in the South, if we could just meet our economic problems. . . ‘I would like to go back down there and make them one more Democratic speech. I just feel like I have one in me. The poor old state, they haven’t heard a Democratic speech in 30 years. All they ever hear at election time is nigger! nigger! nigger!’”

The theory suggests that when upwards of 60 percent of voters consistently agree that rich people should have their taxes raised, a candidate who promises to do so might be identified as what he actually is: middle of the road. That if Democrats give Democratic speeches on economic issues, voters suckered into Republicanism by refrains like Jihad! Jihad! Jihad! just might try something else. And that new voters might be attracted into politics if they could just hear a candidate cut to the radical quick of the actual problems that are ruining their lives. My new Republican friends didn’t know they were not “supposed” to like a “liberal” like Bernie Sanders. Then they heard what he was saying, and liked what they heard. How many are there like them? That’s what I’ve been trying to begin to find out.



A populist moment in Dallas

Dallas is Dallas. At Love Field, a middle-aged woman sports a “Mrs.” T-shirt—1970s-style antifeminist trolling. I pass the Dallas Country Club, which made news last year for admitting its first black member after he spent 13 years on a waiting list. The Holocaust Museum features a “Ground Zero 360: Never Forget” exhibit on 9/11. (Jihad! Jihad! Jihad!)

Hillary Clinton had recently been to Texas. She did a fundraiser here in a gated community where guests were told the address only after delivering their $2,700 checks. For nationally prominent Democrats, one of the donors complained, “All Texas is to anyone is a stop to pick up money.”

Not all nationally prominent Democrats. When I talk with a bunch of old hippies after an afternoon Sanders rally at a downtown convention center in Dallas, their minds are blown. Long-haired Zen Biasco is a professional “creativity teacher”; Morris Fried first picketed against apartheid in 1965. The only non-Jew in the group, and the only native Southerner, explains Texas politics: “The states that came up throughout the plantation economy did not really believe” in democracy. “It was the elites running things, and basically the GOP here in the South, especially in Texas, has inherited that basis of understanding. In Texas we are not
necessarily a red state. We are a non-voting state.”

These are the people you’d see at any lefty rally anywhere. But this lefty rally was unlike any they’ve seen in their adopted hometown. “I’m shocked at such a draw on a Sunday afternoon!” one offers. “I’m shocked at all the young people in this crowd!”

Before Sanders began speaking, I had spoken to two of those young people, a married couple, who represent a liberal holy grail: kids who had grown up conservative—Mormons!—and reasoned their way to the left. “Thanks to people like Bernie,” as one put it. They try to spread the gospel to professional circles saturated with Republicans and to their families back home.

The husband unspools a splendid version of the Sanders argument:

“I don’t think the values of those communities are really represented in their politics, family values, the ideology they profess to have. . . doesn’t match up with the words or things [the politicians they align themselves with] actually represent. I don’t think people realize that if they actually were for family values, and were for the working family, that Republican policies are not going to move you closer.”



Sanders on the stump

The speech begins. I’ve rarely heard one more electric. Bernie gets to the part about how America could increase its competitiveness and move toward full employment by spending a trillion dollars rebuilding bridges and roads, and a fashionably dressed young woman next to me with a swallow tattoo on her wrist cries out like a cheerleader.

“INNNNNNNFRASTRUCTURE!!!!”

The senator follows with a disquisition about the Sherman Act.

“ANTI-TRUSSSSTTT!” she shouts.

When he gets to reinstating the Glass-Steagell act, she lets out a “WHOOOOOOOO!”

At the 21-minute mark comes something extraordinary. After a reverberating ovation for a call for pay equity for women, a promise to fight for 12 weeks of paid family leave, and an excoriation of the fact that “the American people work more hours than any other major country on Earth.” Then the senator announces his marquee platform plank.

“To make every public college and university tuition-free.”

The crowd’s response is so ecstatic it overdrives my tape recorder. It continues into a chant: “BERNIE! BERNIE! BERNIE! BERNIE!”

And when the show ends, a crowd in a nearly post-coital mood of sated exhilaration doesn’t want to leave, doesn’t leave, until Bernie returns to to the podium for something I’ve never witnessed at a political event, an encore, and announces that the crowd numbered 6,000.

I followed the campaign that evening to the University of Houston, where he got the same thunderous reception before 5,200 college students. Both events got prominent play in the local media, where hundreds of thousands of Texans heard heretical ideas that they might not have read in their newspapers before: like raising taxes on the rich isn’t crazy, even if 62 percent of Americans agree.

Some things polls have a hard time recording. They may miss kids like these, who only carry cell phones, as pollsters rely mostly on landlines. Or the intensity of support, how many people are willing to knock on doors for a candidate. And, last but very much not least, novel issues and how constituencies respond to them.

In 1965, for instance, when he began running for governor, Ronald Reagan made the focal point of his speeches the student uprising at Berkeley. His consultants told him to knock it off because it wasn’t showing up in their polls as a public concern. Reagan ignored them, reading the response of crowds that didn’t yet think that students tearing up their college campuses was a “political issue” to bring up when pollsters called.

Similarly, in the late 1970s, when the Equal Rights Amendment began failing in state after state though polls showed it had majority support, a sociologist named Ruth Murray Brown polled anti-ERA women activists in North Carolina and found that more than half of them had never participated in politics before. The pundits didn’t know how to count what they didn’t know was out there.


Rust belt populism

That’s what I thought of when I met Gypsy and David Milenic, whose front lawn had hosted that house party on July 30. I had read an interview with Sanders in which he said the campaign was hosting these parties around the country, which he would address via a live video feed. I chose one as far afield as possible from the places where “liberals” are supposed to congregate. Ten miles past a creationist museum billboard on I-90, there was no arugula, but there were crackers, pretzels, and store-bought gingersnaps. Griffith, Indiana, population 16,619, has a per capita income of $21,866.

“My history of political volunteering is that this is the first political volunteering I have done,” Gypsy tells me, taking a break from directing traffic and packing her two small children off to grandma’s. “But, to be honest, Bernie is the first person who’s gotten me out of my chair and out doing things.”

From her front porch, she casts her nervous eye over a lawn that keeps filling, and filling, and filling. (In the interview Sanders said the campaign was planning for 30,000 participants across the nation; the final number turned out to be 100,000.)

“This home was paid for by union dues,” Gypsy says. “That matters. Keeping it in the family: that matters. Being able to have a small town like this that was a mix of blue-collar and white-collar matters.”

At 6:30 a political meeting unfolds unlike any I have ever seen. Bernie is to speak on a live feed at 8:00. David, an accountant, welcomes us, and invites people to stand up and introduce themselves.

A young man who has been busily setting up the AV system volunteers to go first.
“Both my parents together made barely over the poverty line, and I can tell you that life sucks,” he begins.

“I have no financial support from my family. I get very little from the government. I am on my own, trying to make it, trying to thrive, just like everybody behind me. And it’s hard. And I am currently about 50 grand in debt between student loans, car loans. . . and I am trying so damned hard. And working so damned hard.”

The crowd responds with an ovation.

“I see all my friends, and all of my friends who suffer the same way I do, and they can’t make ends meet. They work three jobs. . . and they still struggle! And it just burns me. Because it wasn’t like this! Now, you go to college for four years and you’re in debt 20, 30 years. Sometimes for life. . .”

He trails off. Applause encourages him on. “I want to see change. And I believe Bernie Sanders is the one to do it.”

And on it went. For an hour and a half, testimony after testimony after testimony. The issue of student debt dominated. So did the consensus that together they could do something about it.

In Griffith, I met a remarkable black retiree named Martha Harris. Her grandparents were slaves, and she remembers going into hiding at the age of three when her father was run off by the Klan for being “uppity.” She had been following the story of Sanders’s public encounters with Black Life Matters activists at the Netroots Nation gathering in Phoenix. She just wondered why people were still going on about it. “I saw him flub. And like any white man, his staff put him out there without his underwear on. So he ran home and he got his long johns on. And I’m okay with that. He’s learning.”

Harris was one of the Sanders supporters who, following that evening in Griffith, set up a storefront Sanders office in Hammond, Indiana. She had recently been a guest on a radio show in Gary, where the African-American population is 85 percent and one third of the houses are abandoned. She was scheduled for a half hour. The response was so enthusiastic the interview went on for an hour and a half.

Among the political class, the discussion of the supposed reverberations that followed Sanders’s encounter with Black Lives Matter activists in Phoenix was incessant. That kind of conflict is something the political media knows how to talk about. So they talk about it. What happened on the radio in Gary, not so much.



Responsive politics

The question is, what else is happening that they aren’t talking about?

Maybe this. In 2005, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes published some remarkable journalism on his experience canvassing for John Kerry in Wisconsin, where voters didn’t seem to have any idea that their economic distress was something for which voting could make a difference.

“When I would tell them that Kerry had a plan to lower health-care premiums, they would respond in disbelief—not in disbelief that he had a plan, but that the cost of health care was a political issue,” Hayes reported. “It was as if you were telling them that Kerry was promising to extend summer into December.”

Hayes wondered what a more responsive Democratic politics would look like.

“One thing that nearly all Americans share is debt.” His idea? “Building a movement around credit reform—through the formation of local ‘debt clubs’ that would be part of a national campaign, for example—would be one way for progressives to reach out to non-believers.”

Now “debt clubs” are being formed. They’re being formed around the Sanders campaign. I wouldn’t argue that this will add up to a presidential nomination. But I’ve seen enough in places like Dallas, Houston, and on David and Gypsy Milenic’s front lawn in Griffith to know that something is happening here, something that reminds us that our existing models for predicting winners and losers in politics need always be subject to revision.

Rick Perlstein is the Washington Spectator’s national correspondent.

[jeaniebueller]

As a woman, I just can't see voting for Bernie over Hilary.

[ESF]

Oct 12, 2015 14:49:43 GMT -5 downtoearth said:

Silver has a chart. It shows that when you multiply the number of liberals and whites among state electorates, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Iowa rank first, second, and third. Texas is near the bottom—a place where Bernie Sanders should feel about as welcome as a La Raza convention at the Alamo, right?

This is fascinating!

ETA - found it.
fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/bernie-sanders-could-win-iowa-and-new-hampshire-then-lose-everywhere-else/

[darkling_glory]

Oct 12, 2015 14:58:26 GMT -5 jeaniebueller said:

As a woman, I just can't see voting for Bernie over Hilary.

Why? Is he anti-woman? Is he pro-life? I was all about Hillary until this summer. Now? I'm really feeling Bernie.

[jeaniebueller]

Oct 12, 2015 15:07:01 GMT -5 darkling_glory said:

Oct 12, 2015 14:58:26 GMT -5 jeaniebueller said:

As a woman, I just can't see voting for Bernie over Hilary.

Why? Is he anti-woman? Is he pro-life? I was all about Hillary until this summer. Now? I'm really feeling Bernie.

I am not aware of him being anti woman or pro life, but if I have a choice, I would vote for a female over a boomer aged white male on the issue of women's reproductive rights.

[darkling_glory]

Oct 12, 2015 15:09:29 GMT -5 jeaniebueller said:

Oct 12, 2015 15:07:01 GMT -5 darkling_glory said:

Why? Is he anti-woman? Is he pro-life? I was all about Hillary until this summer. Now? I'm really feeling Bernie.

I am not aware of him being anti woman or pro life, but if I have a choice, I would vote for a female over a boomer aged white male on the issue of women's reproductive rights.

But... He supports women's reproductive rights. Including paid maternity/family leave.

[jeaniebueller]

Oct 12, 2015 15:12:52 GMT -5 darkling_glory said:

Oct 12, 2015 15:09:29 GMT -5 jeaniebueller said:

I am not aware of him being anti woman or pro life, but if I have a choice, I would vote for a female over a boomer aged white male on the issue of women's reproductive rights.

But... He supports women's reproductive rights. Including paid maternity/family leave.

So does Hilary. I am sorry, I just haven't drank the Bernie kool aid.

[darkling_glory]

Oct 12, 2015 15:15:29 GMT -5 jeaniebueller said:

Oct 12, 2015 15:12:52 GMT -5 darkling_glory said:

But... He supports women's reproductive rights. Including paid maternity/family leave.

So does Hilary.

Right. But I'm trying to understand if the only reason you'd back Hillary over Bernie is reproductive rights when right now their stances are pretty equal on that topic.

I wonder if people (not just you) see Bernie as establishment solely based on the fact he's a white male when the more I, personally, read about him the more I tend to think he really is something new and different.

[jeaniebueller]

Well, I also think that although his agenda is admirable, there is no way he will be able to accomplish even a fraction of what he hopes to do. Its all very unrealistic. And really, I don't think he is *that* new and different from what we have seen in the past. Howard Dean, etc.

[heyjude]

It's time for a woman president.

It's time for more female leaders around the globe.

Women around the world and in this nation are raped, murdered, mutilated, assaulted, degraded, paid less, worth less, get less then men on the regular, simply for being female.

It's time for a cultural shift. A revolution. More women in power who care about these issues. Not just here. But everywhere.

HRC as POTUS is a good start.

[elleblue]

Oct 12, 2015 15:18:09 GMT -5 darkling_glory said:

Oct 12, 2015 15:15:29 GMT -5 jeaniebueller said:

So does Hilary.

Right. But I'm trying to understand if the only reason you'd back Hillary over Bernie is reproductive rights when right now their stances are pretty equal on that topic.

I wonder if people (not just you) see Bernie as establishment solely based on the fact he's a white male when the more I, personally, read about him the more I tend to think he really is something new and different.

His record and beliefs about gun control are the main reason why I won't vote for him. I agree with his stances on many other issues, but not that one, and it's an important one to me. I align closely with both Hilary and Bernie, but guns tip it in her favor. 

[ESF]

Oct 12, 2015 15:21:41 GMT -5 jeaniebueller said:

Well, I also think that although his agenda is admirable, there is no way he will be able to accomplish even a fraction of what he hopes to do. Its all very unrealistic. And really, I don't think he is *that* new and different from what we have seen in the past. Howard Dean, etc.

I don't know...sure, there are similarities between the two, but I think they are two very different candidates.

The big difference is that Dean wore the Democrat label with pride.  Dean wasn't ever trying to be anti-establishment. He loved the Democratic Party. He wasn't trying to upend it. He was trying to make it live up to its full potential. And he accomplished that at the DNC. I really believe that the party is what it is today because of him. I fucking love Howard Dean.  

In contrast, Sanders is running an outsider, anti-establishment campaign. He won't even call himself a Democrat.  He's much more comparable to Ralph Nader than Howard Dean.

[downtoearth]

Oct 12, 2015 15:18:09 GMT -5 darkling_glory said:

Oct 12, 2015 15:15:29 GMT -5 jeaniebueller said:

So does Hilary.

Right. But I'm trying to understand if the only reason you'd back Hillary over Bernie is reproductive rights when right now their stances are pretty equal on that topic.

I wonder if people (not just you) see Bernie as establishment solely based on the fact he's a white male when the more I, personally, read about him the more I tend to think he really is something new and different.

Please explain this to me.  I don't get the Bern and I DO see him as a white, older, male who is telling us what to do.  He's not personable or good at consensus and hasn't had much major legislation get through the house or senate during his tenure.  In that sense he is very "establishment" to me.  And ,yes, he's not rich like the Clintons, but he's more well off than a lot of Boomers his age and benefited from a time when houses were cheap, jobs paid well, and the stock market went up just as much as any other boomer. 

He has similar stances to Hillary on women's rights, racism for that matter, but he hasn't championed those in the past.  He's voted for things consistently, but he's not the one bringing them to the floor and building the consensus from my understanding - he had two women's rights bills in 1993 and 2013 that he cosponsored on women's rights - that's it other than voting Dem party line on others.  Plus his 2013 bill was co-sponsored by like 35 people, so he's not novel.  And I don't think it passed out of committee.  (Prove me wrong if he is, but I looked up his record and it's all what he feels and not what he's done for women.)  He did cosponsor the Lily Ledbetter bill also for pay equity and that did go into effect... so he and his 54 other cosponsors on that bill did well there.

Besides how he feels on an issue, which isn't too much different than most democrats, what has he done and do you really think after 16 years in the house and 6-8 (can't remember) in the senate that he's made such a difference that his record speaks to getting so much of his agenda through and onto us?  I really want to understand and I've asked my friends the same.

Take for example his college bill vs. Clinton's college bill.  They are both bills on the spectrum for change IMO, but one is achievable and the other a pipe dream (especially with respect to getting through congress). 

Clintons would cost $17.5 billion/year and be funded by taking away upper class tax credits - make college more affordable, simplify FAFSA/application, sliding scale fees/tuition based on need, free community colleges, roll back student loan rates to 4.2%. 

Sanders would cost $47 billion/year and be funded by taxing every stock, bond, and hedge fund transaction at 0.5 to 0.005% (basically still taxing the rich).  His would make all public 4-year colleges/universities free (with no funds going toward non-academic buildings - stadiums, parking, student centers, and less adjunct professor reliance) and states would come up for the remaining $23 billion needed to run this with continued increase or maintenance of state funding/matches.  He would roll back interest rates for loans to 2.3% and never over 8.25% (or close) and let anyone refinance.

So they are really similar, but on different magnitudes.  One is more achievable with less change at first and one is a great ideal that would probably flop in congress without major work on the Democrats' part.

[asdfjkl]

Americans don't know what Socialism is.  

[elleblue]

Oct 12, 2015 15:46:25 GMT -5 asdfjkl said:

Americans don't know what Socialism is.  

Which is why he'll have a difficult road ahead of him if he's the nominee. That word has been a boogeyman for as long as I can remember and it'll be easy to use that against him. Nevermind that we already do have socialist institutions in this country. 

[ESF]

Oct 12, 2015 15:18:09 GMT -5 darkling_glory said:

Oct 12, 2015 15:15:29 GMT -5 jeaniebueller said:

So does Hilary.

Right. But I'm trying to understand if the only reason you'd back Hillary over Bernie is reproductive rights when right now their stances are pretty equal on that topic.

I wonder if people (not just you) see Bernie as establishment solely based on the fact he's a white male when the more I, personally, read about him the more I tend to think he really is something new and different.

I like Bernie. I think he has some good ideas. I think that despite the scare he's giving HRC supporters, he's a positive influence in the race. But this idea that he's this new and refreshing face just is over-sold.  Bernie has been in Congress for 25 years. In that time, he's gotten plenty of pork for his home state, voted for Congressional pay raises, found it appropriate to impose the gun law preferences of a rural white state on the rest of the country, and supported a good deal of defense spending.  He managed to do all these things with the support of a tiny, non-diverse state.

Sure, he's not taking big donor money.  But let's be real - he has only been able to do it because his supporters are upper middle class white people with extra money laying around to just throw at political campaign.  If he was going for a more diverse coalition, he'd need establishment dollars.  

His ability to be principled comes as a result of being extraordinarily privileged.

[jdnotbyrider]

I had to draw the blueprint to my response very carefully, considering I am one of them, one of them being a white liberal millennial who is voting for Sanders over Clinton in the primaries. (My Bernie sign goes down for a Clinton one if Clinton does become the nominee, which I know still to this day is very, very likely.) I will say this:

If it was 20-25 years later, Sanders would have probably benefited a lot more, with his key support in youth being in the demographic that votes the most by that point in their 30's and 40's, and perhaps, he'd be in a time where the word socialist wasn't so dirty.

It just sucks, that either way with Hillary or Sanders, that Congress is going to stay the biggest bunch of bitches for at least the next two years, because of the Republican Majority.

[msmerymac]

Oct 12, 2015 16:12:19 GMT -5 jdnotbyrider said:

I had to draw the blueprint to my response very carefully, considering I am one of them, one of them being a white liberal millennial who is voting for Sanders over Clinton in the primaries. (My Bernie sign goes down for a Clinton one if Clinton does become the nominee, which I know still to this day is very, very likely.) I will say this:

If it was 20-25 years later, Sanders would have probably benefited a lot more, with his key support in youth being in the demographic that votes the most by that point in their 30's and 40's, and perhaps, he'd be in a time where the word socialist wasn't so dirty.

It just sucks, that either way with Hillary or Sanders, that Congress is going to stay the biggest bunch of bitches for at least the next two years, because of the Republican Majority.

Dems have a somewhat decent shot of taking back the Senate in 2016. I'm not optimistic that they can ever take back the house in my lifetime due to gerrymanders. 

[msmerymac]

I also like that Bernie is fighting the good fight in regards to the problems with capitalism, whether or not it hurts his electibility. I watched the episode and his entire point was that neither Chuck Todd nor any other political reporter ever asks Republicans running, "So, are you a capitalist?" but they constantly ask Sanders if he's a socialist. It's just a different economic viewpoint. Each have pros and cons.

[blink]

Oct 12, 2015 15:22:29 GMT -5 heyjude said:

It's time for a woman president.

It's time for more female leaders around the globe.

Women around the world and in this nation are raped, murdered, mutilated, assaulted, degraded, paid less, worth less, get less then men on the regular, simply for being female.

It's time for a cultural shift. A revolution. More women in power who care about these issues. Not just here. But everywhere.

HRC as POTUS is a good start.

I wish I could like this again.

[downtoearth]

Oct 12, 2015 16:12:19 GMT -5 jdnotbyrider said:

I had to draw the blueprint to my response very carefully, considering I am one of them, one of them being a white liberal millennial who is voting for Sanders over Clinton in the primaries. (My Bernie sign goes down for a Clinton one if Clinton does become the nominee, which I know still to this day is very, very likely.) I will say this:

If it was 20-25 years later, Sanders would have probably benefited a lot more, with his key support in youth being in the demographic that votes the most by that point in their 30's and 40's, and perhaps, he'd be in a time where the word socialist wasn't so dirty.

It just sucks, that either way with Hillary or Sanders, that Congress is going to stay the biggest bunch of bitches for at least the next two years, because of the Republican Majority.

But really, what is novel about him?  Is it b/c he is talking about the 1% and amount of money that banks/wall street controls? Why do you like him so?

[MrsAxilla]

Oct 12, 2015 15:37:45 GMT -5 elleblue said:

Oct 12, 2015 15:18:09 GMT -5 darkling_glory said:

Right. But I'm trying to understand if the only reason you'd back Hillary over Bernie is reproductive rights when right now their stances are pretty equal on that topic.

I wonder if people (not just you) see Bernie as establishment solely based on the fact he's a white male when the more I, personally, read about him the more I tend to think he really is something new and different.

His record and beliefs about gun control are the main reason why I won't vote for him. I agree with his stances on many other issues, but not that one, and it's an important one to me. I align closely with both Hilary and Bernie, but guns tip it in her favor. 

I hate to be condescending toward my friends, but I really wonder if they know Bernie's gun record.  The loudest Bernie supporters I know are also the ones in favor of the strictest gun control and I don't understand the disconnect.

[elleblue]

Oct 12, 2015 17:20:05 GMT -5 MrsAxilla said:

Oct 12, 2015 15:37:45 GMT -5 elleblue said:

His record and beliefs about gun control are the main reason why I won't vote for him. I agree with his stances on many other issues, but not that one, and it's an important one to me. I align closely with both Hilary and Bernie, but guns tip it in her favor. 

I hate to be condescending toward my friends, but I really wonder if they know Bernie's gun record.  The loudest Bernie supporters I know are also the ones in favor of the strictest gun control and I don't understand the disconnect.

I don't get it either. If gun control isn't important, I could see why someone might favor Bernie over Hilary, but if it is important to them, why get so excited over Bernie? I can't help but feel there might be some (subconscious) sexism involved. 

[jdnotbyrider]

Oct 12, 2015 17:01:10 GMT -5 downtoearth said:

Oct 12, 2015 16:12:19 GMT -5 jdnotbyrider said:

I had to draw the blueprint to my response very carefully, considering I am one of them, one of them being a white liberal millennial who is voting for Sanders over Clinton in the primaries. (My Bernie sign goes down for a Clinton one if Clinton does become the nominee, which I know still to this day is very, very likely.) I will say this:

If it was 20-25 years later, Sanders would have probably benefited a lot more, with his key support in youth being in the demographic that votes the most by that point in their 30's and 40's, and perhaps, he'd be in a time where the word socialist wasn't so dirty.

It just sucks, that either way with Hillary or Sanders, that Congress is going to stay the biggest bunch of bitches for at least the next two years, because of the Republican Majority.

But really, what is novel about him?  Is it b/c he is talking about the 1% and amount of money that banks/wall street controls? Why do you like him so?

I like that he's someone who is staying away from having a political Super PAC, no donations from Goldman Sachs or the like, and is someone who has been getting up close and personal with workers unions to the point of marching with them on occasion. He's a big picture candidate like Clinton, but without being a big money candidate.

While he has been on the right side of things way before Clinton, that doesn't matter because as long as you arrive to the proper thought, that's what matters, not the time you got to that thought. (Clinton not being for gay marriage unitl 2013, hey, at least she switched her position on it and had the thought to change.)

If (I say if because the primaries haven't happened yet) Clinton becomes the nominee, GREAT! She has a platform that matches a lot of Bernie's stances, and it puts us closer to a female president then we've ever gotten before!

I just worry about it being same old same old for one of them, being called an "awful" president because the government around them doesn't allow them to get anything done, and that they would unfairly go after Clinton a lot harder then they would with Sanders.

[MrsAxilla]

Oct 12, 2015 17:30:58 GMT -5 elleblue said:

Oct 12, 2015 17:20:05 GMT -5 MrsAxilla said:

I hate to be condescending toward my friends, but I really wonder if they know Bernie's gun record.  The loudest Bernie supporters I know are also the ones in favor of the strictest gun control and I don't understand the disconnect.

I don't get it either. If gun control isn't important, I could see why someone might favor Bernie over Hilary, but if it is important to them, why get so excited over Bernie? I can't help but feel there might be some (subconscious) sexism involved. 

Maybe tomorrow's debate will clear things up! 

[miniroller]

I hope I can explain this properly:
Internationally, I feel so much more comfortable with Hillary as our leader than I'd ever feel with Bernie. This is one of my biggest concerns. I see his idealist viewpoint on issues in America, & become concerned that our country might get into trouble when it comes to international politics, under Sanders as president. Whereas Clinton has the connections, the intelligence, & by God- the charisma to get things done on an international stage.

[heyjude]

Pharell says it's time for a woman!!

"It's time for a woman to be in there." Williams goes on to say that "women think about things in a holistic way,"

As he endorses HRC on Ellen.

[darkling_glory]

Part of it, for me, is that I love that Bernie is so willing to take on Wall Street and the 1%. I like his enthusiasm and passion and the fact that he gets people fired up. Sort of like Obama did back in 2008. There is something refreshing about that. There is something exciting about that.

Hillary is just as establishment as any politician, let's not kid ourselves there. While I consider myself to be a pretty hardcore feminist, I don't want to only vote for Hillary because she's a woman. I want to *want* to vote for her.

[chedifuen]

Oct 12, 2015 16:56:21 GMT -5 blink said:

Oct 12, 2015 15:22:29 GMT -5 heyjude said:

It's time for a woman president.

It's time for more female leaders around the globe.

Women around the world and in this nation are raped, murdered, mutilated, assaulted, degraded, paid less, worth less, get less then men on the regular, simply for being female.

It's time for a cultural shift. A revolution. More women in power who care about these issues. Not just here. But everywhere.

HRC as POTUS is a good start.

I wish I could like this again.

I want to make out with this response.