Bernie Sanders is beating all of Obama's important 2008 records

boing
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Your version of complete is different than mine, looking at all the metrics, wage stagnation, stagnant unemployment, etc… Also the fact that he decided not to actually punish the people who ruined the economy, or actually enact a solid regulatory framework to prevent the same people doing the same thing again.

Which made insurance companies richer than ever, and did nothing to improve the quality of general care, or fix the fact that a single health issue has a pretty good risk of bankrupting the average American. It also probably killed the only real chance we had for having civilized, first-world, single payer health care. I will give him the fact that it allowed greater access for the poor (well, mandated it, whether they wanted it or not since insurance companies need money), though it was so badly implemented that many people who would have benefited from it still can’t figure out how to even get access to it.

These are good things, but both things he could have done his first day in office, and not a full term later, and only because the LGBT community was withdrawing their support because of his complete lack of action.

Which is also good. Maybe. Or not. I don’t care what gender the people on the supreme court are, only that they are good at their jobs. Time will tell on this one.

And murdered him extrajudicially, and then made his body disappear. Which is a win? I suppose?

Without teeth, and cap and trade is a bit of a joke in the first place.

So they can make cars in Mexico and China with our tax dollars, despite still being uncompetitive failing industries.

Which is great, until you realize how corrupt the whole thing is in the first place. No-bid contracts, cronyism, and going for cheap labor over any sort of quality. Further, what does it matter, since it isn’t like these contractors are going to be doing things like fixing or terminally aging infrastructure.

Great, more arbitrary laws based on intangibles so we can imprison more people based on what lawyers can convince a jury their thoughts were. Good.

So more people can be in debt for decades after getting gouged for a useless degree. Good.

While still being grossly underfunded, understaffed, and largely a scion to industry.

While leaving their breeding ground, and the issues that lead to this being a decent career choice untouched.

While sponsoring the least open government in history.

Though yes, Obama has done some good things, but then again both of the Bushes and Reagan also did some good things, while still being on the whole shitty presidents. To me, the things he HASN’T done weigh much heavier than the things he did do. But at least he might leave us with TPP, as his parting shot. I’m not saying that Obama is the worst president we ever had, but he didn’t live up to his promise at all. We needed a modern FDR, and what we got was a lukewarm centrist (who is as friendly to big business, big security, the military, the NSA, insurance companies, big oil, and the 1%, as any president in the last 3 decades).

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He’s been electable in Vermont (population 627k. 25 US cities have populations greater than the state of Vermont). The topic is presidential election, nationwide.

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I think what you’re looking for is a King or perhaps a Wizard, not a President. I very much doubt you’ll ever be happy. By any objective standard, the United States is a significantly better place now than it was before Obama became President.

Also if you think Single Payer was truly a viable option when the Democrats could barely get 60 votes on the table in the Senate (for all of a few months because of Senator Kennedy’s illness) and not all of the Democrats are liberals, you are dreaming. It was either this or nothing for another 80 years.

Also if you think Insurance companies made out like bandits, uh… you do know that insurance reform capped their profits well below what they were making right?

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Sure, but it’s a state with a lot of rural conservatives, many of whom vote for Sanders, because they care less about the label than his actual policies, which they agree with. The label means nothing. Esp. since the R’s have spent the last few decades calling everyone they disagree with on anything a ‘socialist’, rather weakening its value as an attack. See also: crying wolf.

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Sanders still doesn’t have African-American support, which Obama did in 2008. This is from a CNN poll published on 10/12 :

In South Carolina, Clinton’s advantages stem largely from Sanders’ unpopularity with black voters, who made up a majority of Democratic primary voters in the state in 2008, the last time there was a competitive Democratic primary. Back then, black voters broke 78% for Barack Obama to 19% for Clinton.

Sanders winning in New Hampshire and Iowa will not be meaningful.

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Except for the condoning torture,and domestic spying, and being a proponent of extrajudicial murder, draconian copyright laws, more domestic spying, and the ability of the government and corporations to eat the rights of individuals with impunity… You know, the little stuff.

Oh, and the war on drugs, including medical marijuana (and lying about it).

These are all actually things he had some control over, too. Some of them were easy enough to make strides towards fixing with nothing but a stroke (or lack of one) of his pen.

As for the insurance companies, a profit cap isn’t that big of a deal when you get a couple million extra mandatory customers (by force of law). More people buying in, also translate to less risk, which is very good for them. And looking at the state of everyone I knows insurance after Obamacare, they sure found ways around any limitation they might of had (we’re getting around 30% the insurance, for 150% the price now, woo!).

I don’t want a damn wizard, I want someone as uncompromising in their ideals as the average Republican. I want someone who is looking out for ME, not corporations or the government, or large donors (Goldman Sachs, Disney, the rest of Obama’s top donors). I want someone who has the damn spine to stand against fucking torture, illegal imprisonment, government sponsored murder, and Big Brother. These are easy issues to take the moral high ground on, indeed these issues should be seen as completely non-negotiable. There is no wiggle room, there is no room to make the other party happy… These are strong moral issues, that go to the core of what our nation should stand for.

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Sigh. I wanted to avoid this but…

He banned torture outright and tried to close down Guantanamo, but was overruled by Republicans.

Was exactly the same before he joined office.

It has been the policy of the United States to kill enemy combatants for its entire existence.

Identical to what was in place before he became President.

Reference to where he has done anything different from anyone else? Because there are significant number of policies and laws put in place to do quite the opposite.

Considering the number of pot dispensaries in my city and the existence of multiple states with legal pot (and zero repercussions), I have a hard time seeing how he has somehow cracked down as hard as previous Presidents.

What are you talking about? A profit cap is about as huge of a deal as you can get. A few million extra customers is nothing compared to the extra cost they incurred by no longer being able to deny medical coverage for pre-existing conditions, have people on their parents insurance until age 26 and being unable to charge wildly different rates for different classes of people.

So… you want someone who screams about how committed they are to their ideals, but when is in power does the exact opposite of what their ideals are and when they aren’t, obstruct everything to the point nothing ever gets done? It sounds like you want blowhards. Good luck with that. I personally would rather have results.

Politics is about compromise. You can’t have everything you want and crying that you’re only getting 50% of what you want is childish.

Obama isn’t perfect, but he is a hell of a lot better than our last few Presidents.

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I have a feeling we’re just spinning in circles here. I’m not going to convince you, you’re not going to convince me. I suppose the only course of action now is to challenge you to a du… I mean agree to respectfully disagree.

It seems that we agree with the same principles, and mostly hold the same ideology. Our opinions might differ when it comes to a particular individual, and his fulfillment of these principles, but the main thing is that we hold some expectations for our leaders. Your focus and mine may differ, but that isn’t terribly important in the big picture. I generally focus on the negative, what hasn’t been done, what is yet to do. You, it seems (and pardon me if I’m wrong), seem to be of the opposite mind. Which is fine, both are valid.

You aren’t going to get any argument from me on this point. I just hope the next one is better, which, disagreement on the current one aside, is a decent aspiration.

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I think he could do well against anyone the republicans are fielding in a national election, if he got the nomination.

I will say, having just seen some of the post debate commentary, it’s truly amazing the lengths to which the commentators went to dismiss Bernie.

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The highlight of the CNN debate for me was the establishment cognitive dissonance after it was over.

The majority of the CNN punditry (of course) went ahead and called it for Clinton even before the camera lights had cooled. However, shortly thereafter there was a glitch in the matrix when they naively consulted their own CNN panel of average Americans who overwhelmingly raised their hands when asked if Bernie Sanders won the debate.

Whoops…

Her reaction is priceless.

CNN corporate employee says:

“Raise your hands if you think Bernie Sanders won this debate…”

[Overwhelming majority raises hands]

After awkward pause… with incredulous, uncomfortable, disheartened voice she reponds:

“Most of you… Okay…”

She said it like it was the wrong answer to a quiz. Hahaha…

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This pretty much sums up how seeing that felt:

It wasn’t nearly as entertaining as the republican debate, though. They really need to drag out a few wingnuts to liven things up if they want to compete in the ratings.

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The difference may be that Sanders has extremely weak support among African Americans. The crew at 538 seem to think that this is a virtually insurmountable obstacle for him:

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Vermin Supreme must not be poling well enough to qualify for the debates. :frowning:

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I’m not sure how you can honestly care about progressive issues but defend this guy. He’s not “evil” but he certainly is completely in the service of corporations, big business, and a non-transparent, over-reaching military industrial complex. You’re giving him way too much credit for things he hasn’t really accomplished and diminishing the huge things he failed to accomplish. And it’s not about Republican intervention- the President’s power is limited, but within the domain of power he’s given, he can make the most of the least of it. And Obama unequivocally made the least. Other than his eloquent speeches, he’s done almost nothing. Here are the major areas a President can affect:

-Environmental Policy. This is one area we the people have very little power to change, though we still need to do our personal part. The real damage is being done by industry, manufacturing, and other big boys that can only be reigned in by a government. 8 years later, we are in a much worse spot than when Bush was running the show. From this angle, both presidents are equally useless. Every world climate summit that occurred during Obama’s reign was a dead end; when other major countries agreed on taking some sort of action, the U.S. killed it because it would piss off very powerful American industries, and that’s a no-no. So in the #1, most important issue facing our world, Obama was an epic fail.

Health care, as was already pointed out to you, was a big fail. I’m glad some people on the lower end are getting subsidized, but where do you think those subsidies are coming from? Not the bloated insurance companies. And yes, they are still posting growing profits, contrary to your claim.

War, fuggetaboutit. Between his non-closing of Guantanamo (it’s all the Republicans’ fault? Really? And what about Bagram, Obama’s own little Guantanamo? You can torture anywhere you want, if you didn’t know.

Let’s not forget the Drone program that has flourished under Obama with no help from the Republicans, ensuring that future Middle Eastern generations will hate our guts even more from forcing them to live under 24-7 terror of flying killing machines. If you don’t think that’s going to bite us in the ass someday, you’re crazy.

And the economy? Wall Street got off scot free, and, as you well know, Obama put some of the culprits in charge- again, with no help from Republicans on this one. And if you think this temporary fake bubble of prosperity equals fixing our economy, you have no clue how economies work. We’re just as in the hole as ever, and it’s only a matter of time before a new crash makes 2008 seem like a picnic. We’ve done absolutely nothing to fix America’s fundamental problem, which is we don’t make anything, we just buy it.

You combine our health issues with our crumbling economic base, and add a few climate-based natural disasters and we’re done for. Obama did nothing at all to prepare us for that.

And finally, yes, the TPP has got to be the most insane thing a human being could invent for this planet. Obama has been behind it from day one. You want to believe he’s somehow a guy that cares but has to deal with “reality”? Go ahead. The evidence points to the opposite. He was never Hope nor Change, it was clear that he was a corporate centrist from day one. That’s the difference between Bernie and him. If Bernie wins and then betrays his ideals, it will be a real crushing tragedy. With Obama, it was expected and predictable. It would have been shocking if things had played out any other way.

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Did you listen to Webb rather than just look at his neck? That’s as much of a wingnut as the Blue Dogs can come up with.

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How about Mike Gravel? Or they could invite John McAfee to run as a democrat. I mean, he’s not half as nuts as most of the folks on the stage of the republican debate, but you’ve got to take what you can get.

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I just have this sinking feeling… Not about Bernie in particular… About I dunno… The fact that we are the Titanic. And I don’t want to be locked in the hold…

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Stuff and nonsense. Bill Clinton tried to do that, and that resulted in Congress turning the military’s “No Gays” policy (which can be altered by the President) into a federal law (which can’t.).

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue” was Clinton’s attempt to salvage something out of that debacle, by issuing an executive order that prevented the military from engaging in “gay hunts”.

Barack Obama could not repeal the federal law by himself.

Contrary to common public perception, presidents do not have magic wands they can wave to repeal laws passed by Congress. (Fair warning: any replies to this observation involving the words ‘mandate’ or ‘bully pulpit’ will be mercilessly mocked.)

That “No Gays” law was repealed when military leaders went to Congress and asked them to repeal it, because it was harming the military’s readiness.

Do you really think Obama could have accomplished all the strategic promotions, retirements, and shuffling of command assignments that led to that result in his first day on the job?

Not even remotely.

He plays a long game sometime, but he gets shit done.

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