Bernie Sanders is more popular than Trump, but the press ignores him

I mean, you’re right: we don’t live in a democracy, we live in a federal republic with democratic input mechanisms. But I don’t think that’s what you meant. :wink:

Yeah, I get this and I understand Acer’s point that the media may try to vilify him as the latter. However, I think it’s important that he continues to be himself regardless. If you are X and some bully (in this case the media, or perhaps the LCD public) tries to intimidate you by calling you X, you had better stand up as X. Good for Bernie for saying “I’m a socialist”. I hope he doesn’t abandon his candor for expediency, else a vote for him is a vote wasted.

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How about war? I pay a whole lot for wars I don’t support.
Wars that only in the most outlandish imagination have any possible chance of actually protecting me from harm.

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Things to consider apropos SvT…

People love somebody to hate:

Is Trump really a fascist? Four perspectives from one of the best, if not the best, magazines in the States:

Bernie Sanders’ top five race problems:

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This is worth a read too. Laughing at Trump makes it easy to overlook how not all of his populist appeal is negative:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/17/speaking-the-unspeakable-why-the-establishment-wants-to-silence-donald-trump/

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Oh my glob. Between the memes, ad hominem attacks and lack of facts, where to begin?

You don’t like candidates because of agism? The two you mentioned are in good health (maybe not as healthy as Trump claims his doctor claims… :slight_smile: ) And the mechanisms of our government have a means of dealing with the death of one in office, should a tragedy like that occur.

Sanders has no idea where to get the money? Sanders has said many times how he plans to fund his vision. It’s on his campaign web site. It’s no secret.

You talk of lies. I invite you to take a look at this. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/opinion/campaign-stops/all-politicians-lie-some-lie-more-than-others.html?_r=0
Yes, Hillary, even Bernie are on the list. Scroll down, they’re towards the bottom.

Candidates under investivation? You forgot to mention Christie. And Kasich. But what of it? Investigations are a dime a dozen. Well, actually, they can be several million dollars, and the republicans seem to love spending years on some, even if there’s no result. It’s almost as if they use them as a political diversion.

Unemployment? The data I see shows that it typically goes up under the policies of republican presidents and down under democratic ones.

One of the best correlates to crime is income disparity, which republicans foster. Plus, I invite you to take a look at this.
http://editions.lib.umn.edu/smartpolitics/2009/09/16/red-states-have-higher-crime-r/

You know “all there is to know about both parties”? Wow. That’s great.

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The difference, of course, being that a war is undertaken by someone who has already sought and gained power by popular consent.

You’re not paying for the candidate, you’re paying for the forum, you’re paying for the benefit of hearing more diverse voices. If it helps you, think of your tax dollars as being earmarked toward the candidates you like, but couldn’t hear before because corporate money was drowning them out. Think of rednecks waving confederate flags as having their money earmarked toward the others. The speech doesn’t represent you unless and until you vote for them.

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Did your dad tell you that?

Your naive faith that the current U.S. system is actually democratic is, touching.

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Indeed, given how little coverage and attention libertarian candidates get, I think @goodpasture must be extremely principled. I personally think it would be fantastic to have one or a few principled libertarian candidates to vote for as opposed to our current candidates who are invariably slanted towards their existing corporate funders.

Apparently, principled libertarians don’t want candidates who share their views on fairness to get elected…because that would be…umm…unfair I guess?

Incidentally, this “libertarian” free-speech-is-money talking point is brilliant – it takes advantage of the biggest philosophical lacuna in the libertarian edifice to subvert the libertarian desire for democracy and autonomy into support for an authoritarian corporatist regime. Libertarians have never been able to explain why the current distribution of wealth should be considered a fair starting point for future meritocratic competition, and it is exactly the current unfair distribution of wealth that is being used to influence elections to maintain that unfair distribution of wealth.

Really phenomenal propaganda technique, especially so because libertarians seem to tend to consider themselves immune to propaganda.

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That is the cutest snake I have ever seen!

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But I also think it’s important to note that libertarians shouldn’t be so terribly opposed to Bernie Sanders as our friend seems to be. I mean, the guy isn’t exactly Che Guevara…

In fact, I think it should be noted that while Sanders calls himself a socialist, he’s not really at all a socialist. I mean, I can appreciate why he calls himself a socialist – rehabilitate the word, move the Overton window. But in reality Sanders is just a Keynsian social democrat whose policies would be considered utterly moderate essentially anywhere else in the industrialized world – or, for that matter, in the United States pre-Reagan.

In fact, his policies seem like they’re designed to try to enlarge the middle class for the purpose of stimulating growth in our capitalist consumer economy. Really nothing about appropriating the means of production in there. So really, when you think about it, Sanders is almost the opposite of a socialist.

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Every American pays higher taxes so that religious institutions don’t have to. I’ve sat in services where either the minister/priest or a “guest speaker” (during a service) has specifically stated how the congregation is to vote. Every woman, person of color, LGBTQetc. has to pay this extra price. Every right-thinking straight white male has to pay it. What’s the difference?

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He calls himself a ‘democratic socialist’, no?

I thought he wanted to emulate the Nordic Model?

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I’ll defer to you on this – I don’t want to get into a semantic argument about the meaning of “socialist” and its various flavors.

I’m mainly just trying to point out that Sanders is not planning on nationalizing any industries or expropriate factories for worker collectives or anything like that. In fact, he seems to be trying to increase the size and wealth of the middle class, which I think would actually have the effect of promoting economic growth and capitalistic creative destruction, etc.

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[quote=“Michael.Lederman, post:118, topic:70876, full:true”]
I’m willing to wager money that whatever Republican takes the primary is our next POTUS
[/quote]I don’t blame you.

If a Democrat takes office in 2016, it’ll be the first time in modern American history where we do not moronically ping-pong back and forth between Democratic and Republican administrations (in favor of Republicans).

Corporatists love it this way and that’s how the status quo establishment stays in power no matter who has been in office all these decades. This way the Democrats can play a perpetual blame game against the last Republican administration instead of taking responsibility for their own corporatist right policies against the American people.

The difference in 2015 is the online/offline power of grassroots movements that’ve been slowly, but steadily gaining massive strength in recent years under the radar of the corporate media. The media hasn’t been reporting on this fact directly, however, there’s plenty of strong evidence if one looks at the halo effects. (i.e., minimum wage increases, gay marriage, marijuana legalization, war resistance, beginnings of prison reform, health care reform, etc.)

I’ve detailed this grassroots growth and dynamic here:

This 2015 dynamic will not work in Republicans’ overall favor.

Republicans thrive on low-information voters who are disconnected from reality, facts, etc. and can easily be manipulated through fear (capitalizing on terrorism, “the other”, etc.) via corporate media.

Trump’s “grassroots” movement is the last throws of a dying breed of hateful, chickenshit, cowardly and (frankly) stupid Americans. They won’t stand a chance up against us head-to-head. We will outsmart them and we will destroy their horrific movement for the sake of this nation and world.

In 2015, there’s still plenty of cowardly American dolts who are willing to throw away our nation’s freedom and future in the name of cowardly fear and loathing. However, for the first time in our nation’s history, we now have a huge group that’s spreading information to one another through word-of-mouth both online and offline to combat this ongoing idiocracy.

I’m not sure our numbers are large enough (and nimble enough) to combat the corporatist media alignment that’s working in Hillary’s favor to keep Bernie at bay. However, I do know that if we overcome that huge obstacle, we’ll most certainly landslide the Republican end of the corporatist machine that’s in so much disarray today.

If Sanders wins the nomination, we’ll definitely win the presidency. If Hillary wins? You may be right. I could see her losing to a Republican nominee because she doesn’t have the grassroots passion and strength behind her that Bernie does.

I know I’ll be holding my nose and voting for Clinton in the general election if she beats Sanders, but I really won’t be able to muster the strength to keep up the work for her on a grassroots level. Like many others, I’m just not going to sacrifice more of my own money, time and life for yet another Republican-Lite corporatist presidency.

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Incumbent, career politicians love this sort of thing, in fact they love “campaign finance reform” in general, because it amounts to an Incumbency Protection Act.

It’s not just media coverage that gives incumbents an advantage. I used to work for a company that at one time or another employed the children of three governors (two Dems, one GOP) as well-paid “interns”.

The governor can fuck with your business in several totally legal ways, so you treat him nice, capisce? It’s the American way.

Now, you allow challengers something like a 4:1 advantage over incumbents in spending, I might see my way to agreeing with you.

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I’m totally down with term limits. Maybe set the limit to one term? :smile:

A quick google suggests incumbents massively out-raise challengers right now, so 1:1 would be a big improvement. But yeah, election reform would have to consider addressing the incumbency effect.

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Do you have any data to back this up? I’m not really convinced that incumbents would prefer their campaign funding to be limited in any way relative to non-incumbents, but I’m certainly open to evidence.

Not that I disagree with the op-ed you posted, but I suspect @daneel is correct that 1:1 spending would be an improvement in terms of the current situation, and therefore a worthwhile goal. Limiting incumbents to 1/4th of the campaign funding of others might have some justification, but on its face it looks unfair enough that it seems politically impossible. This seems to me like letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

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