Bernie Sanders running for preznit?

[stillrobertpaulsen]

i love that some of the progressive old timers are coming out at DU, and was heartened by the response to your OP, robert!

Thanks nashvillebrook! Yeah, some of the groups there are the real deal. General Discussion, except for Octafish and a few others, is polluted with trolls and bad faith actors.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

It was disappointing, particularly since his poll numbers the month before showed he had a huge lead.

Of course he had a huge lead. And had the votes been counted the way they had been cast, he would have won.

And exit polling is suddenly, for the first time in history, completely unreliable.

Regarding Howard Dean, while the media didn't need a conspiracy to act like jackals, that doesn't mean it didn't happen. I just haven't seen any compelling evidence. But yeah, for his numbers to be as high as they were just a few weeks before, then he finishes in third? It might make sense if there had been some obvious event that precipitated it. But there really wasn't anything I recall, and it's not like he had no ground game in Iowa. I may not have been totally on his side (he was my safety choice after Kucinich) but I respected the fact that he was getting his support grassroots - so how could the caucusing have been so weak - how does grassroots support just evaporate in a matter of weeks?

Exit polling? Yeah, that's so 20th century.

[Belligerent Savant]

.

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/ ... hange.html

Last week’s post explored the way that the Democratic party over the last four decades has abandoned any claim to offer voters a better future, and has settled for offering them a future that’s not quite as bad as the one the Republicans have in mind. That momentous shift can be described in many ways, but the most useful of them, to my mind, is one that I didn’t bring up last week: the Democrats have become America’s conservative party.

Yes, I know. That’s not something you’re supposed to say in today’s America, where “conservative” and “liberal” have become meaningless vocal sounds linked with the greedy demands of each party’s assortment of pressure groups and the plaintive cries of its own flotilla of captive constituencies. Still, back in the day when those words still meant something, “conservative” meant exactly what the word sounds like: a political stance that focuses on conserving some existing state of affairs, which liberals and radicals want to replace with some different state of affairs. Conservative politicians and parties—again, back when the word meant something—used to defend existing political arrangements against attempts to change them.

That’s exactly what the Democratic Party has been doing for decades now. What it’s trying to preserve, of course, is the welfare-state system of the New Deal of the 1930s and the Great Society programs of the 1960s—or, more precisely, the fragments of that system that still survive. That’s the status quo that the Democrats are attempting to hold in place. The consequences of that conservative mission are unfolding around us in any number of ways, but the one that comes to mind just now is the current status of presidential candidate Bernard Sanders as a lightning rod for an all too familiar delusion of the wing of the Democratic party that still considers itself to be on the left.

The reason Sanders comes to mind so readily just now is that last week’s post attracted an odd response from some of its readers. In the course of that post—which was not, by the way, on the subject of the American presidential race—I happened to mention three out of the twenty-odd candidates currently in the running. Somehow I didn’t get taken to task by supporters of Michael O’Malley, Ted Cruz, Jesse Ventura, or any of the other candidates I didn’t mention, with one exception: supporters of Sanders came out of the woodwork to denounce me for not discussing their candidate, as though he had some kind of inalienable right to air time in a blog post that, again, was not about the election.

I found the whole business a source of wry amusement, but it also made two points that are relevant to this week’s post. On the one hand, what makes Sanders’ talking points stand out among those of his rivals is that he isn’t simply talking about maintaining the status quo; his proposals include steps that would restore a few of the elements of the welfare state that have been dismantled over the last four decades. That’s the extent of his radicalism—and of course it speaks reams about the state of the Democratic party more generally that so modest, even timid, a proposal is fielding shrieks of outrage from the political establishment just now.

The second point, and to my mind the more interesting of the two, is the way that Sanders’ campaign has rekindled the same messianic fantasies that clustered around Bill Clinton and Barack Obama in their first presidential runs. I remember rather too clearly the vehement proclamations by diehard liberals in 1992 that putting Clinton in office would surely undo all the wrongs of the Reagan and Bush I eras; I hope none of my readers have forgotten the identical fantasies that gathered around Barack Obama in 2008. We can apparently expect another helping of them this time around, with Sanders as the beneficiary, and no doubt those of us who respond to them with anything short of blind enthusiasm will be denounced just as heatedly this time, too.

It bears remembering that despite those fantasies, Bill Clinton spent eight years in the White House following Ronald Reagan’s playbook nearly to the letter, and Barack Obama has so far spent his two terms doing a really inspired imitation of the third and fourth terms of George W. Bush. If by some combination of sheer luck and hard campaigning, Bernie Sanders becomes the next president of the United States, it’s a safe bet that the starry-eyed leftists who helped put him into office will once again get to spend four or eight years trying to pretend that their candidate isn’t busy betraying all of the overheated expectations that helped put him into office. As Karl Marx suggested in one of his essays, if history repeats itself, the first time is tragedy but the second is generally farce; he didn’t mention what the third time around was like, but we may just get to find out.

The fact that this particular fantasy has so tight a grip on the imagination of the Democratic party’s leftward wing is also worth studying. There are many ways that a faction whose interests are being ignored by the rest of its party, and by the political system in general, can change that state of affairs. Unquestioning faith that this or that leader will do the job for them is not generally a useful strategy under such conditions, though, especially when that faith takes the place of any more practical activity. History has some very unwelcome things to say, for that matter, about the dream of political salvation by some great leader; so far it seems limited to certain groups on the notional left of the electorate, but if it spreads more widely, we could be looking at the first stirrings of the passions and fantasies that could bring about a new American fascism.

Meanwhile, just as the Democratic party in recent decades has morphed into America’s conservative party, the Republicans have become its progressive party. That’s another thing you’re not supposed to say in today’s America, because of the bizarre paralogic that surrounds the concept of progress in our collective discourse. What the word “progress” means, as I hope at least some of my readers happen to remember, is continuing further in the direction we’re already going—and that’s all it means. To most Americans today, though, the actual meaning of the word has long since been obscured behind a burden of vague emotion that treats “progressive” as a synonym for “good.” Notice that this implies the very odd belief that the direction in which we’re going is good, and can never be anything other than good.

For the last forty years, mind you, America has been moving steadily along an easily defined trajectory. We’ve moved step by step toward more political and economic inequality, more political corruption, more impoverishment for those outside the narrowing circles of wealth and privilege, more malign neglect toward the national infrastructure, and more environmental disruption, along with a steady decline in literacy and a rolling collapse in public health, among other grim trends. These are the ways in which we’ve been progressing, and that’s the sense in which the GOP counts as America’s current progressive party: the policies being proposed by GOP candidates will push those same changes even further than they’ve already gone, resulting in more inequality, corruption, impoverishment, and so on.

So the 2016 election is shaping up to be a contest between one set of candidates who basically want to maintain the wretchedly unsatisfactory conditions facing the American people today, and another set who want to make those conditions worse, with one outlier on the Democratic side who says he wants to turn the clock back to 1976 or so, and one outlier on the Republican side who apparently wants to fast forward things to the era of charismatic dictators we can probably expect in the not too distant future. It’s not too hard to see why so many people looking at this spectacle aren’t exactly seized with enthusiasm for any of the options being presented to them by the existing political order.

[Wombaticus Rex]

The book is out now, if any of Ye Faithful need some Holy Writ:
http://www.chelseagreen.com/the-essenti ... ie-sanders

In this short, accessible book, author Jonathan Tasini draws heavily from Sanders’ ample public record of speeches, statements, and interviews, and couples his working-class spirit with specific legislation he has championed on a number of core proposals that comprise a broader people’s agenda for America, including:

A national, single-payer health care system;
Free public higher education;
Taking on wealth and income inequality;
Preserving Social Security;
Caring for our veterans;
Ensuring civil rights for all;
Combatting climate change; Reforming Wall Street, and much more.

The Essential Bernie Sanders and His Vision for America is a must-read for anyone who shares a vision for a forward-looking, sustainable, and more just United States of America, and is eager to change the course of history.

I'm wondering when/if the obvious dichotomy between "People with college degrees are working full-time jobs that don't pay them enough to raise a family" and "Let's give everyone a college degree for free" will get addressed. Probably never.

The biggest reason I support STEM education initiatives: Americans might learn to count at some point.

A boy can dream!

[Belligerent Savant]

.

Quite tempting to want to root for Bernie, huh? In a vacuum, outside of the reality of our current zeitgeist, that is.
Perhaps in a world where such a candidate would have a legitimate fighter's chance, and if actually elected (and here's the money shot), would actually follow through with his promises rather than simply become beholden to the 'handlers', discarding his campaign platform shortly after being sworn in.

But he wouldn't get very far if such a scenario had any legitimacy, would he?


http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/23/magaz ... .html?_r=0

Do you think President Obama is a socialist? No.

What is your elevator pitch for socialism? My elevator pitch is that the United States has a grotesque level of income and wealth inequality where the top one-tenth of 1 percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, where almost 20 percent of our children are living in poverty, 40 percent of African-American children are living in poverty. We are moving rapidly toward an oligarchic form of society where a small number of families control not only the economy but our political system as well. It is imperative that we develop a strong political movement that says to the billionaire class they cannot have it all.

A recent poll showed that Americans are more willing to vote for a Muslim or an atheist for president than a socialist. Do you think you could take back the word ‘‘socialism’’ and keep it from being what it is right now, which is almost a nasty word? Actually, what surprised me about that poll was, given the negative publicity that the word ‘‘socialism’’ has, that — what was the number of the people who were prepared to vote for a socialist?

It was in the high 40s. Yeah. Well, that’s pretty good, and it’ll get higher.

One of the few clear ideas that Americans have about socialism is that it involves high taxes. Can you sell that, the idea that you might have to raise taxes? I think we can sell the idea that when the rich are getting much richer and corporations are enjoying record-breaking profits that yes, they should start paying their fair share of taxes.

Are you familiar with the hashtag #Bernie­SoBlack? I’ve heard of it.

A lot of black activists felt as if, when they criticized you, the response they got back was ‘‘but he marched on Washington,’’ as though that were an absolution. And so it became this joke on Twitter: ‘‘Bernie’s so black, he’s the first one killed in horror movies.’’ ‘‘Bernie’s so black, he’s dropping a mix tape.’’ Well look, Black Lives Matter is a very, very serious issue. And clearly, as a nation, we have to move away from a situation where black women are dragged out of their cars, thrown to the ground, assaulted and then die in jail three days later for the crime of not signaling a lane change. Or more recently, a fellow named Samuel DuBose got shot in the head for the crime of not having a license plate on the front of his car.

Were you surprised that black activists responded so negatively to you at first? Yes, I was, because I think if you check the record, you will find that I have one of the strongest civil rights records in Congress, and this is an issue I feel strongly about.

What do you think of Donald Trump’s surge in the polls? Not much. I think Donald Trump’s views on immigration and his slurring of the Latino community is not something that should be going on in the year 2015, and it’s to me an embarrassment for our country.

Do you think it’s fair that Hillary’s hair gets a lot more scrutiny than yours does? Hillary’s hair gets more scrutiny than my hair?

Yeah. Is that what you’re asking?

Yeah. O.K., Ana, I don’t mean to be rude here. I am running for president of the United States on serious issues, O.K.? Do you have serious questions?

I can defend that as a serious question. There is a gendered reason — When the media worries about what Hillary’s hair looks like or what my hair looks like, that’s a real problem. We have millions of people who are struggling to keep their heads above water, who want to know what candidates can do to improve their lives, and the media will very often spend more time worrying about hair than the fact that we’re the only major country on earth that doesn’t guarantee health care to all people.

It’s also true that the media pays more attention to what female candidates look like than it does to what male candidates look like. That may be. That may be, and it’s absolutely wrong.


Interview has been condensed and edited.

[Wombaticus Rex]

I can defend that as a serious question. There is a gendered reason

Like I said, let's teach these kids to fucking count before we drop critical theory on them.

Math and science, baby, yeah.

[tapitsbo]

I thought the control of/lack of STEM was deliberate to some extent.

People I've spoken to doing advanced STEM research in school seem to be subject to some pretty serious "epistemic disorientation". And doing work that others take credit for, the ultimate purpose of which is unknown to those working on it.

Obviously you know all about this stuff - do you think the lack of STEM is deliberate to some extent to keep people from building/designing/fixing solutions to the lucrative problems that are the status quo?

[Wombaticus Rex]

I thought the control of/lack of STEM was deliberate to some extent.

People I've spoken to doing advanced STEM research in school seem to be subject to some pretty serious "epistemic disorientation". And doing work that others take credit for, the ultimate purpose of which is unknown to those working on it.

Obviously you know all about this stuff - do you think the lack of STEM is deliberate to some extent to keep people from building/designing/fixing solutions to the lucrative problems that are the status quo?

No, I actually don’t. I think it’s because education policy has, for decades now, been steered by 1) liberals with good intentions who believe that America was made great by mere “Enlightenment values” and who have every incentive to expand their influence with no regard for results and 2) Fortune 500 technocrats with no real interest in the subject beyond political considerations that were unencumbered by facts, and financial considerations that were unencumbered by consequences.

A toxic, shitty stew.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

.

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/ ... hange.html

That momentous shift can be described in many ways, but the most useful of them, to my mind, is one that I didn’t bring up last week: the Democrats have become America’s conservative party.

I'm a Conservative, and this is why I'm voting for Bernie Sanders

[tapitsbo]

I'm extremely curious what Wombaticus' possible aphorism regarding the intentional epistemic disorientation backdoored into STEM, in its current shape, might be.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

Nobody on his staff seems to think this is a serious bid for anything but raising his national profile to increase his clout in DC. It's a PR campaign; it is not a presidential campaign.

Bernie Sanders Takes the Lead in Iowa Poll

Sanders 'stunned' he's beating Clinton

Have you ever seen that Robert Redford movie, The Candidate? The character he plays, Bill McKay, is asked to run for Senator because he has no chance of winning. He doesn't really want to at first, but decides to do so from an activist perspective of getting his message out. When he polls extremely poor at first, his campaign manager blasts him. McKay responds, "I thought I was supposed to lose!" To which he is told, yes, but don't make it look like you're throwing it, keep it close.

Best case scenario would be if life imitated art. Don't want to spoil it for those who haven't seen the movie, but it's got one of the best last lines of any political movie.

[Wombaticus Rex]

It's pretty serious, daug! Definitely. That staff has grown considerably since then, even here in Burlington at their low-key HQ on Church. I'm into it; there's a lot of money getting pumped into the local economy right now. Definitely encourage all your friends to get excited, optimistic, and most all, generous with the donations.

(The movie parallel, my man, is too delicious. Just uncanny. I'm gonna have to watch it again later tonight. I don't subscribe to any outside conspiracy theories on the origin of his campaign, for the record, I believe it was 100% a feedback loop between him, Phil and Jeff.)

The fact that actual socialists are all writing stern thinkpieces on what a sellout Bernie is; the fact that Black Lives Matter mock him at best; I think this is going to help him. He'd be too easy to write off if the most radical corners of the Left were rallying to his reproduced likeness. I also think he can assemble a broad base because of, rather than despite, his heavy support for labor unions which has become increasingly focal in his recent imaging/messaging.

At this point in the degradation of the Western World, I think electing a principled man with a plan would be the only possible way to educate Americans about how their own government works. Or more specifically, does not work.

So go Bernie. Win big. Hire some Bush kids and make sure they're on every flight you take.

[Nordic]

Oh man. Your last line. Yeah! Funny as hell, that!

Although Bernie is carefully avoiding foreign policy which is the biggest piece of turf, by far, that the Bushies and their organized crime cartel profit from.

[RocketMan]

Well, the other shoe just dropped...

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015 ... tic-debate

Sanders, in contrast, stumbled over his past policy on gun control and, in what was a pivotal moment of the debate, opted to give Clinton a pass over the issue that has dogged her campaign.

“I think the secretary is right,” he said in turning to Clinton, shortly after she was pressed over her use of the email server by the CNN moderator, Anderson Cooper. “And that is that the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.”

The line prompted thundering applause from the Democratic audience and a heartfelt “thank you, me too” from Clinton, who smiled and shook Sanders’ hand.

The writers also seem desperate for the primaries to just be over and Clinton to BE THE NOMINEE ALREADY.

[82_28]

The leftist part of the Democratic party absolutely want Sanders and distrust Clinton. But I think that O'Malley is the most electable and could probably take on the best that the republicans could bring. This I didn't know until seeing it tonight. I am not sure what any of it means, but holy stupidity.