Imagine if he actually got elected president.
If he had 4 years to actively discuss most of his ideas in public the way the office of President gets attention, imagine the minds he could change when the camera is no longer forced to look away.
I would argue that 4 years of hard truth from Bernie could significantly change the course of this nation for decades if not a generation.
And that’s exactly why I’m rooting for him.
I’m rooting for him, too. However, I’m also aware enough of the forces arrayed against him to know that, when it comes to his becoming America’s crabby grandpa who tells the kids the hard truth from the Oval Office, imagining is all I’ll be able to do.
So - who is the best and most electable Dem tandem according to happy mutants/ BB readers?
Sanders/Harris?
Warren/Buttigieg?
Note - I can’t see Warren/Sanders mostly due to likely ageism issues - maybe I’m wrong.
I’d honestly like to see him and Warren as prez and vice prez, whichever either becomes.
Warren and sanders are the two most actually qualified.
“Vice President Warren today announced a new program to relieve student debt. Others in the administration cheered this announcement from the White House.”
Warren just turned 70. She’s a spring chicken!
Arrrgh I could see them actually pulling shit like that.
Why does an elderly Jewish man scare the hell out of everyone MORE THAN TRUMP?
Trump is irrational but I would argue fear of Bernie is far more irrational
Bernie’s “straight talk” is truthful.
Trump’s “straight talk” is lies.
What do you think most people are more comfortable with?
ETA: I love your new haircut! Have you been working out?
To be fair, Sanders calling himself a socialist could legitimately lead people to believe that he’s much further to the left than he actually is. In Europe, where socialism is sometimes a mainstream position, he’d be called a social democrat, since he’s not nearly as far left as actual socialists like Melenchon or Corbyn.
He’s not as far left as Eugene Debs either. More likE FDR. So, marginally to the left of Eisenhower, economically.
Both the plutocrats who own the media and the wealthy elite that compose most of the pundit class have class interests that are directly threatened by any move towards economic justice.
They actively deploy their resources to defend those class interests. As always, sophisticated propaganda is about selection and emphasis. The overt slander is saved in reserve; first comes the erasure and concealment.
Exactly. And all this bullshit with the Democratic Socialists of America calling themselves “comrade” and having a logo based off of the East German Communist Party one may be meant in good fun, but as somebody with relatives who had to deal with that sort of shit, I don’t find it funny at all. Social Democrats are not socialists in that sense and that’s a good thing!
Doug Henwood’s Behind the News
The Chauncey Devega Show
Jacobin Magazine has a good longform political podcast, if you’re okay with hearing mostly academics explain their work in detail
Intercepted with Jeremy Scahill is great, but currently on summer break
Democracy Now! Is a good daily news hour that has a lot of solid interviews
I believe that’s what he calls himself, actually, a social democrat… I think we need a better engagement with categories like socialist, social democrat, communist, conservative, anarchist, reactionary. In my experience, people have little actual idea as to what these words mean, especially in historical context. The big problem is and always has been the propaganda that attempts to flatten and simplify these words, and strip them of their more complicated history.
Depends on what you mean by “similar”, but:
For domestic political interviews, The Katie Halper Show.
For media critique, Citations Needed.
For foreign affairs, Moderate Rebels.
For military-themed current affairs, What a Hell of a Way to Die.
For street level protest action, It’s Going Down.
Rogan might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but I enjoy his conversational interview style which does a great job of asking useful questions while not leading his guests. I’m just really really selective about which guests I’m willing to listen to him interview. I get Rogan’s show isn’t for everyone, and that some of his brolingual vernacular is casually bigoted. Also, not unlike the Bern, a significant subset of his stans are far lousier human beings. I find his interviews informative, but I also get why others want nothing to do with him. I, for instance, crossed that boundary with Bill “Smarmy” Maher a couple years ago. Everybody gets to decide where their personal boundaries are with any given person, and it’s dickish to tell them their wrong (not saying you’re doing that).
Do you have any sources for that? Everything I have seen says that the linked hands are symbolic of anti-racism and solidarity. The DSA were critical of the Eastern bloc when it existed and believe that there are other ways to be socialist.
Here’s a discussion of how the DSA logo developed from Teh Wiki. Nothing about East Germany.
The red rose is part of the official logo of the DSA,[19] having traditionally been a symbol of socialism[20] since the 1886 Haymarket Affair and the resulting May Day marches from the 19th century to the current day.[21] It was drawn from the logo of the DSOC, its precursor organization, and previously of the Socialist International, which shows a stylized fist clenching a red rose, the fist being substituted with a bi-racial handshake pertaining to the DSA’s staunch anti-racism.[22][23] The fist and rose logo had been originally designed by Didier Motchane and others for the new French Socialist Party founded in 1971[24] and was later shared by socialist and labor political organizations worldwide.
In the East German logo, both hands are white.
It looks like DSOC was more affiliated with the Western branch of the post-war Socialist International as typified by German Social Democrat Willy Brandt. See this from a biography of a DSOC founder:
Further down in that book I read the following:
Which supports your point about socialism not being as monolithic – or as Communist – as conservatives think it is.
Whether or not that was the stated reason, the creators couldn’t have been ignorant of the use of the symbol in East Germany (despite the addition of bi-racial iconography), which was based on the same 19th century historical background, so it still is in rather poor taste. Symbols get poisoned, like that nice Hindu one that the previous authoritarian German regime used.
