The Sanders Movement

[Phi for All]

( there's that outlook again, a little bit of something good is better than none of something excellent )

 

None? Extreme conservatism going on.

 

How about "The possibility of a lot of excellence is far better than a little bit of something good"? Because you know what? We are, right now, the wealthiest large nation that's ever existed on the planet, despite what our corporations and leadership would have you believe. And we didn't get there by taking little conservative baby steps.

 

We got here by courting massive amounts of immigration that drove innovation. We raced ahead of the world scientifically during WWII (although the resulting conservative campaigns against intellect and learning have wasted much of that momentum). And our commitment to Common Law has helped us overcome many of the problems apparent in Europe with all it's cultural, economic, and legal obstacles. America's greatest, most memorable, most proud moments were NEVER achieved by conservatism.

 

The negativity doesn't fit with a country that's so wealthy. It's time to bring leadership in line with what the People want, and the corporations that enjoy all the benefits of an American charter are going to have to start behaving like corporations, instead of like People with immunity from prosecution.

 

We can afford to have a LOT of excellence. They've been dangling that "little bit of something good" carrot so long now you can see it's rotten.

[Endy0816]

I'm not sure he could appeal to enough conservatives. We'll see what happens.

 

Generally candidates pick VP's who will help them gain votes they wouldn't otherwise. I think most of Sander's supporters would vote Hillary if Sanders wasn't on the table, so she would likely pick someone else as her running mate.

Edited March 17, 2016 by Endy0816

[MigL]

Why do you label everything you consider bad as 'conservative', Phi ?

Why not just call it 'realism' or the 'glass is half full/empty' mentality ?

Why not stick to facts and avoid 'spinning' other's posts to support your skewed view of their position ?

 

You seem to go to great lengths to attack the posts of people YOU consider Conservative.

Isn't intolerance of others opinions a conservative trait ?

Take a look in a mirror sometime.

[waitforufo]

Assuming predictions hold true and nothing unforeseen happens to shake up the Democratic race, what are the chances of B. Sanders being appointed to a high position ( even VP ? ) in an H. Clinton presidency ?

I've never really been clear on the appointment process, and if purely a choice, I'm not aware of the dynamics, good or bad, between Clinton and Sanders.

( there's that outlook again, a little bit of something good is better than none of something excellent )

Generally VPs are selected based on how many electoral college votes they can bring in the general election. Vermont doesn't have many. So if Sanders could help bring in a State with a high electoral college count that Hillary could not get herself then he would be considered. If he can't then Hillary will pick someone from a state like Florida, Ohio or Texas. Other considerations would be to pull in a large voting block. We all assume Hillary will do strong with women, minorities, and liberals, so a moderate white male might be a good pick.

[Delta1212]

I think Julian Castro is generally considered the favorite for Hillary's VP pick.

 

Sometimes a President will find a place in their administration for a primary opponent, but it's not something that should generally be expected and I think it's fairly unlikely that Sanders would make it into a Clinton administration.

 

Frankly, I think he'd be better positioned remaining in the Senate than transitioning to the executive as anything other than POTUS.

[EdEarl]

If POTUS asks someone to serve, it would be difficult to refuse. Executive experience is beneficial for a candidate. Although, Sanders has a lot going for him now.

[Delta1212]

I'm not saying I necessarily think he would decline. I just think he'd be in a better position to accomplish things in the Senate than in the Cabinet. Perhaps if he had future Presidential aspirations it would be a good move, but if Hillary wins, I don't think Sanders will ever be running for President again.

[EdEarl]

If offered, do you think he would take a seat on the Supreme Court, and do you think he would make a good one?

[Delta1212]

I don't think Bernie Sanders would be a good Supreme Court pick for multiple reasons. He doesn't have a legal background which, while not a requirement, is something that I think a Supreme Court Justice should reasonably have. I like a lot of Sanders's views, but Supreme Court decisions are supposed to be based on solid legal ground. While personal philosophy can and often does intrude, especially in some high profile cases, those aren't the only cases that come before the Court. There is also a lot of stuff that more or less represents procedural and administrative minutiae and a Justice needs to be familiar with legal precedents and processes to a degree that I'm not convinced that Sanders does.

 

He is also, frankly, too old. They are lifetime appointments, which means that the President potentially has the opportunity to impact the makeup of the court for decades to come.

 

Bernie is likely to be replaced rather soon in comparison with most appointees to the Court, which means that whatever President puts him there is most likely ceding that position on the Court to whoever the next President is, which could shift the Court in a rather bad direction if the following President is not of the same party.

[Phi for All]

Isn't intolerance of others opinions a conservative trait ?

 

You're the conservative. You tell me.

 

I've made it clear that my conservative beef is when it's used to stall good legislation, or out of racial spite, or just because your party wants to be monkey wrenches. Certainly I'm not criticizing every single instance of being cautious the way you claim.

 

Are you defending the acts of the Republicans in the US Congress that were admittedly done only to block the POTUS in all things? Is stepping on smart stuff your kneejerk reaction, one of the traits you're proud to call conservative, like intolerance of other's opinions?

 

This is a thread about the Sanders Movement. Obviously (or so I thought), the conservative logjam is something that needs to be removed before progress can be made on the scale a movement like this demands. I can't see a single way to make this a bipartisan, unified, concerted effort when half the participants are thinking only of themselves or their party, instead of what's good for the People.

 

It's really not about not tolerating your opinion if your opinion is that I'm against ALL conservative actions.

 

Look, the American People have a lot of ground to make up. We aren't going to see that with Hillary, not even if she got 8 years. Trump being elected POTUS is now on a list of Global Risks. Nobody conservative is going to dig us out, only deeper. Sanders is a solution that doesn't put us more in debt, more at the mercy of special interests, or screaming hatred in the streets.

[MigL]

"You're the conservative. You tell me."

What're you, in high school ?

 

Frankly, I'm Canadian and the funny thing is that you guys ( don't get me wrong, I love Americans ) will get the government you deserve.

None of you, whether on the left or right, are willing to compromise and actually get something done.

Both sides of American politics are ideologically driven, and both sides want it all their grievances addressed, and usually end up with nothing.

( Should it really be that difficult to set up a universal health care system ? )

Its the polarization in American politics that's impeding progress.

 

Its this polarization that has given us 'reality show' idiots like D. Trump running for office.

What America wants is less polarization and much more centrist governments.

That's what the average American wants by definition, a compromise, i.e. a centrist government.

And you need compromise for 300+ million people to get along.

( therwise RangerX may be right, and you guys are headed to another civil war. )

[overtone]

None of you, whether on the left or right, are willing to compromise and actually get something done.

Both sides of American politics are ideologically driven, and both sides want it all their grievances addressed, and usually end up with nothing.

( Should it really be that difficult to set up a universal health care system ? )

Bullshit

The Left is not represented in American politics, nationally. There is no left being stubborn about compromising.

The Democratic Party is disparate collection of compromisers, most of whom are ideologically center-right and authoritarian. They squabble, and display the normal prevalence of corruption and special interest influence and so forth.

The Republican Party has been taken over by a fascist movement based in the cultural and demographic legacy of the Civil War and a recent rise of Protestant Fundamentalism (The Fourth Awakening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Awakening .) This was organized by a plutocratic elite.

Neither "side" - the fascist movement or its various opposition - is ideologically driven, or in fact possessed of a coherent political ideology.

The fascist movement was organized of course to obtain wealth and power for its organizers, who appear (like all such in the past) to have found themselves riding the tiger, so to speak. Fascist movements naturally do not compromise other than as a temporary expedient, because the whole idea is to gain - not share - power. Why would they compromise, other than as a tactic?

The opposition to the fascist movement, on the other hand, is a rabble of conflicting and somewhat incoherent interests and ideologies, with no real core set of beliefs or policies, and so they have been compromising like mad - to the point that they have by stages almost completely adopted the supposed political positions of their supposed opposition of a couple of decades ago - but of course gained nothing by that, because fascists are never actually making deals.

 

What America wants is less polarization and much more centrist governments.

That's what the average American wants by definition, a compromise, i.e. a centrist government

The only "center" the country and citizenry has is a bit to the left and substantially more libertarian than Clinton's ideology. That is, there is no center that involves the current Republican Party's cooperation, or substantial accommodation of the neo-Confederate thugs that comprise the core of Trump's support. The closest thing to a centrist vote would be for Sanders.

 

 

 

Its this polarization that has given us 'reality show' idiots like D. Trump running for office.

Trump is standard Republican. He is no more dysfunctional or idiotic than Romney, Palin, W, or Reagan were.

Edited March 18, 2016 by overtone

[Willie71]

Its like two people offering you a chance to win money.

One offers you a 50% chance to win $10.

The second offers you a 5% chance to win $100.

 

Obviously it would be better to win the $100.

But most people ( not all ) see the unlikelihood of that happening and choose the first option.

 

Assuming predictions hold true and nothing unforeseen happens to shake up the Democratic race, what are the chances of B. Sanders being appointed to a high position ( even VP ? ) in an H. Clinton presidency ?

I've never really been clear on the appointment process, and if purely a choice, I'm not aware of the dynamics, good or bad, between Clinton and Sanders.

( there's that outlook again, a little bit of something good is better than none of something excellent )

I think a better analogy is that Ckinton offers a 100% chance of losing $50.00, Republicans offer a 100% chance of losing $100.00, but Sanders offers a 50% chance of making $100.00.

Bullshit

 

The Left is not represented in American politics, nationally. There is no left being stubborn about compromising.

 

The Democratic Party is disparate collection of compromisers, most of whom are ideologically center-right and authoritarian. They squabble, and display the normal prevalence of corruption and special interest influence and so forth.

 

The Republican Party has been taken over by a fascist movement based in the cultural and demographic legacy of the Civil War and a recent rise of Protestant Fundamentalism (The Fourth Awakening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Awakening .) This was organized by a plutocratic elite.

 

Neither "side" - the fascist movement or its various opposition - is ideologically driven, or in fact possessed of a coherent political ideology.

 

The fascist movement was organized of course to obtain wealth and power for its organizers, who appear (like all such in the past) to have found themselves riding the tiger, so to speak. Fascist movements naturally do not compromise other than as a temporary expedient, because the whole idea is to gain - not share - power. Why would they compromise, other than as a tactic?

 

The opposition to the fascist movement, on the other hand, is a rabble of conflicting and somewhat incoherent interests and ideologies, with no real core set of beliefs or policies, and so they have been compromising like mad - to the point that they have by stages almost completely adopted the supposed political positions of their supposed opposition of a couple of decades ago - but of course gained nothing by that, because fascists are never actually making deals.

 

 

The only "center" the country and citizenry has is a bit to the left and substantially more libertarian than Clinton's ideology. That is, there is no center that involves the current Republican Party's cooperation, or substantial accommodation of the neo-Confederate thugs that comprise the core of Trump's support. The closest thing to a centrist vote would be for Sanders.

 

 

 

 

Trump is standard Republican. He is no more dysfunctional or idiotic than Romney, Palin, W, or Reagan were.

I agree with you. The only candidate close to the center is Sanders. Clinton is where Reagan was in the 80's.

[overtone]

Clinton is where Reagan was in the 80's.

I would say more Nixon, maybe even as liberal as Eisenhower:

 

Reagan's legacy has been cleaned up considerably over time, and you may be too young to be sufficiently wary - Reagan favored revoking and/or privatizing all government welfare including Social Security and Medicare, annulling the Voting Rights Act of 1964 and all Affirmative Action programs, deregulation of the banking and financial industries (which he partly accomplished, resulting in the crash of the Savings and Loan industry under a wave of corruption and real estate fraud, exactly as in the mortgage sector in 2008 only more confined), buildup and belligerent use of the US military, even building and enforcing strong barriers to immigration across the southern border to prevent terrorists from infiltrating (communist ones, from Nicaragua, back then), and so forth. He announced his candidacy for the Presidency in 1980, a significant and major speech, on the site of a famous killing of three advocates for black voting registration by KKK thugs during the Civil Rights unrest, and in that announcement promised to support "States rights" as President, a well known code term for an end to Federal backing of voting rights for black people - the cause of the killers. This was Trump level pandering - the Republican Party hasn't really slid downhill much from Reagan to Trump, at least not in substance.

 

The basic wingnut or T Party behavior and agenda we see today, the same poison, in slightly less vulgar language. Clinton is not in that category.

 

btw: The nostalgia glow around the Reagans, recently given a bump at the memorial services for Nancy Reagan, tends to create a fictional aura of high class and dignity around them. Reagan fit right into the Walmart crowd we see running for President on the Republican ticket today. His natural constituency was the car dealers and small time bankers of southern California, the local Chamber of Commerce types and their employees. The details of his rise to prominence are tawdry. The Clintons are higher class people than the Reagans were, despite being less pretentious.

Edited March 18, 2016 by overtone

[Willie71]

I've posted this before.

 

 

Clinton is diverging from her record a bit this campaign. The above image shows her historical policy votes.

 

Reagan was more authoritarian, but economically he was quite similar to where Clinton is now. The party has moved right a bit, and the Dems now occupy the same place the republicans used to. Clinton has no plan to increase bank regulations, and has no plan to break them up. They have continued the subprime mortgage scam under a different name. Clinton was for TPP. She campaigns against it, but it benefits her donors. Clinton is supported by for profit prisons, yet she has campaigned against them, while historically voting for them. Clinton thought negotiating with Iran was foolish. She is more hawkish than Obama.

 

I'm not glossing over Reagan, but stripping the gloss off of Hillaries rhetoric to look at where she is really at.

[MigL]

In response to your post #62, Overtone...

( bullsh*t ? really ? You hurt my feelings )

 

Sorry, but you guys still don't get it.

There is NO absolute scale of left or right politics.

Left or right of what ?

 

The centre, and for that matter, the whole political spectrum, is not defined by Overtone ( sorry to burst your bubble, its not all about you ); its defined by the roughly 200 million Americans eligible to vote. If half are considered left leaning, and the other half right leaning, the common ground is by definition the centrist position, and also by definition, where the vast majority is most comfortable.

Notice that the centrist position and the whole spectrum shifts for different countries according to their voters. The whole of Europe and Canada have their center and spectrum shifted left compared to the Americans'. But that doesn't matter, because they ( and I ) are not eligible to vote in the US. The only thing that matters is what the average American is comfortable with.

 

So it matters only to you that B.. Sanders is actually a centrist ( and to most Europeans on this forum, and to Willie, and even me ), if the rest of average America thinks he's a 'leftist, Commie pinko'.

 

I find it hard to believe that an obviously very intelligent person such as yourself, still hasn't figured out how democracy works.

[overtone]

Sorry, but you guys still don't get it.

There is NO absolute scale of left or right politics.

Left or right of what ?

This confusion is where you end up if you allow propaganda to define your terms of discussion. This is in fact the goal of authoritarian propagandists - to destroy the meaning of analytical terms is a key step in removing the obstacle of reason from the imposition of authority.

If this is accepted, it becomes impossible to describe efficiently the current situation with regard to - say - the American Presidential election, in which both leading candidates are rightwing politicians (strong corporate capitalist support and allegiances) , but leftwing views are available and valuable in the public discussion. You wouldn't be able to say whether John Kasich (to pick one), is a left or right wing politician, until after the votes for Cruz are counted. Unless you are going to alter your terms week by week as the polls change?

If this is accepted, it becomes impossible to quote or refer to political discourse from even ten or fifteen years ago, in which the popularity of various ideological allegiances was different than it is now, without confusion. You lose even recent history from your discussion.

If this is accepted, ordinary socialism becomes rightwing whenever the discussion is set in Cold War Russia or modern China, and ordinary fascism becomes centrist (or even left-center) whenever the discussion is set in WWII Europe or Cold War South America. People from inside and outside various political systems would no longer share a vocabulary of analysis.

If you redefine your terms of analysis every time a population votes, your analysis no longer communicates anything about any issue except the fact that some people voted on it - whether deregulating the private capitalist banks and privatizing Social Security are leftwing or rightwing ideological stances would change from one election to the next, and whatever anyone wrote or said about it last vote would have to be rewritten in the new vocabulary or discarded as meaningless. (Rendering history and analysis meaningless is the goal of the authoritarian propagandist)

 

The centre, and for that matter, the whole political spectrum, is not defined by Overtone ( sorry to burst your bubble, its not all about you ); its defined by the roughly 200 million Americans eligible to vote

You are mistaking the map for the territory. These terms have had their meanings established by a century or more of political discourse, and they are used to locate and describe aspects of reality.

 

So it matters only to you that B.. Sanders is actually a centrist ( and to most Europeans on this forum, and to Willie, and even me ), if the rest of average America thinks he's a 'leftist, Commie pinko'.

And it matters only to me that Obama was born in Hawaii if enough of average America thinks he was born in Kenya - ok, that's true in a sense. I'll give you that. So when discussing Obama's biography on this forum, are we supposed to frame things around "American Truth", or can we employ reality based concepts as our norm?

Look: for more than a century the terms "leftwing" and "rightwing" have described categories of policy and ideological allegiance, not degrees of popularity. They are used to describe the current state of the population's political will, among other things - not the other way around; they help in such things as answering questions about the ideological movement of that center of opinion. You don't want to lose that.

Are you really planning to rewrite all your analysis and change your vocabulary of discussion every two years after the latest election? If Ted Cruz were to win the next Presidential election with 60% of the vote, would you then begin describing Marco Rubio and John Kasich as leftwing politicians?

I just thought of a killer app you could develop. I'll give it to you, free: It's a pundit translator, that alters spoken or written prose to fit the current political scene in the neighborhood of the current audience. You could even set it up to work on older documents and film clips - what is a political era or Presidential term but a neighborhood of a kind? From 1960 until 2000 in the US, for example, a lot of policies and political stances and people holding them shifted from being leftwing to rightwing and back again three or four times, in terms of the election returns from inside the US. You can set up a translator to handle that - I'm sure the think tanks who currently provide Fox News and the Republican Party with this month's terminology would be happy to provide you with regular database updates, for free.

It would be a compensation of amusement amid the debris of democracy, to read the following: "Many leftwing State governors in America, such as John Kasich (R-Ohio) and Chris Christie (R-NJ) , also supported the transfer of Social Security to private insurance corporations, so with support from both sides at the State as well as Federal level Cruz's initiative easily p[assed both Houses of Congress."

Edited March 19, 2016 by overtone

[Willie71]

From politicalcompass.org:

 

Most governments and political figures are plotted on the right. Doesn't that mean that your centre is misplaced?

The Political Compass chart represents the whole spectrum of political opinion, not simply the range within a particular nation or region. The timeless universal centre should not be confused with merely the present national average. The former is far more meaningful and informative. Where, for example, would the centre be within the political confines of Hitler's Germany, apartheid South Africa or the Soviet Union? By showing the whole spectrum of political thought, we can indicate the width or narrowness of prevailing mainstream politics within any particular country. It also enables us to chart the drifts one way or another of various parties, governments and individuals.

 

Twenty-five years ago, social democracy was riding high in western Europe. A chart at that time would have shown a number of EU governments to the left of the centre. In our globalised age, however, the shift has been rightward, which accounts for the altogether different cluster that the contemporary chart depicts. In other words most democracies, either reluctantly or enthusiastically, have embraced neoliberalism (ie a right leaning economy) to a greater or lesser extent.

 

Curbs on civil liberties, rationalised by issues such as illegal immigration and terrorist threats, accounts for the concurrent drift upwards on the social scale.

 

top

[Phi for All]

Sorry, but you guys still don't get it.

 

I'm afraid this one's on you. You think we're not doing so bad, that we only need to start putting centrists in office and all will be well. That somehow the center of every argument is the perfect place to be.

 

Well this is the part YOU don't get. If your ship has been off-course for 50 years, because some idiots tied the ship's wheel so we're traveling in big circles to the right, you CAN'T just bring the wheel back to the center. You NEED to compensate heavily left to get back on course.

 

This center you keep describing is NOT our course. We need to have our safety nets back to protect us from greedy, insane, treasonous wealth that has only itself as its focus. People shouldn't be ignored over profit.

[MigL]

While your statement is evidently true, Phi, I don't see how a continuance of the 'loggerhead' between not only the two parties, but the whole American populace, serves in any way to bring about progress. What you seem to be saying is the right have had their way for so long, over the left, and the only way to fix it is by having the left subjugate the right for a period of time to 'correct' things.

 

And its not so much the politicians that determine the political spectrum, Overtone, rather the 'comfoft level' or attitude of the voting populace.

And as Willie seems to have pointed out ( intentionally or not ) the attitude/comfort of the voters ( and the political spectrum which suits them ) isn't just different in differing geopolitical areas, it also changes over time.

Edited March 19, 2016 by MigL

[overtone]

 

 

While your statement is evidently true, Phi, I don't see how a continuance of the 'loggerhead' between not only the two parties, but the whole American populace, serves in any way to bring about progress

Once again this vague bs about "the two parties". There has been no such behavior on the part of anyone, or any faction, except the Republican Party. There is no "loggerhead" involving two Parties. There is instead one loggerhead Party, in which Party leadership - wealthy corporate rightwing authoritarian men - has encouraged and welcomed the neo-Confederate faction of the American population, financing and guiding their political voice, organizing a fascist movement in return for the electoral leverage they needed to escape the taxation and regulation of the US Federal government. So they could make a little more money, see?

 

And it worked.

 

 

And its not so much the politicians that determine the political spectrum, Overtone, rather the 'comfoft level' or attitude of the voting populace.

That does not determine the available spectrum, but rather the distribution on it of the political will of the population involved.

 

And as Willie seems to have pointed out ( intentionally or not ) the attitude/comfort of the voters ( and the political spectrum which suits them ) isn't just different in differing geopolitical areas, it also changes over time. You address that to me? After I make that exact point what, four times, on this thread alone?

[Phi for All]

What you seem to be saying is the right have had their way for so long, over the left, and the only way to fix it is by having the left subjugate the right for a period of time to 'correct' things.

 

Subjugation is a very good word for what conservative corporations misusing conservative politics as a weapon have done to the USA. I'm absolutely saying it's time to over-compensate to fix the damage done.

 

I think it's very interesting that you defend the specific things we've mentioned as being normal, par for the course, left/right/center politics, yet when mention is made of sweeping changes, of not letting the right have it all their way for a change, you suddenly call it "subjugation". No, not interesting really. More hypocritical.

While your statement is evidently true, Phi, I don't see how a continuance of the 'loggerhead' between not only the two parties, but the whole American populace, serves in any way to bring about progress.

 

The "loggerhead" you refer to is your centrist, compromising, middle of the road approach. That's where we're jammed up. The Republicans have shown they aren't interested in any real compromise. They want it their way, NEVER Obama's or Hillary's way, simply on moron principles that are about as childish and racist as you can get.

[iNow]

Case in point: Republicans won't even allow a vote for a SCOTUS nominee they've previously praised, "wished" Obama would nominate, and who won unanimously his current appointment.

 

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/03/16/3760727/who-is-merrick-garland/

[Phi for All]

Case in point: Republicans won't even allow a vote for a SCOTUS nominee they've previously praised, "wished" Obama would nominate, and who won unanimously his current appointment.

 

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/03/16/3760727/who-is-merrick-garland/

 

I really hope this blows up in their faces when it comes time to elect Congresscritters. People are sick of this lie that anything coming from Obama is Dark Side.

[MigL]

" They want it their way, NEVER Obama's or Hillary's way, simply on moron principles that are about as childish and racist as you can get."

 

And now you want it your way.

So you're done compromising and you're gonna be just like them.

Congratulations, you're becoming a Republican !