I’d describe Bernie as just barely left. The Berniecrats think he’s the bestest leftist, the DSA think he’s okay, the radicals think he’s a well-meaning but deluded capitalist.
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My point stands: there are people on the left who can also be described as capitalists simply because they’re not in favor of completely dismantling the market economy. It appears you agree in so many words, but spoke rashly in that first quote.
And I’ll just leave this here:
How about excluding them from the definition of left because they have economic beliefs that are consistent with those of European conservative parties?
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Shouldn’t we just accept that left and right are relative descriptors? Otherwise, 50% of the people are leftists, and 50% rightists, with the middle point being at the different points of the political spectrum at different times and places.
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ETA: after re-reading your post, it dawned on me that I misunderstood @Humbabella.
Sorry to interject, but I could interpret your words in a way that sounds like you mistrust experts, and professional politics.
I don’t think you do, really, but I find it worth noting for this thread that the idea of representative democracy is about delegating, including negotiations and compromise, to people we trust. Often, that means that they are experts in one field or the other. In other cases, it means they know the laws, rules, traditions and folklore of the political and burocratic system, and can thus try to negotiate better.
I realise that the US system, while bloody and mindnumbingly partisan, and closed, for some reason has an opening for celebs. But quite seriously, I think that’s exactly the opposite of what representative democracy is supposed to be.
sighs Then again, why would anyone listen to me? I’m just some foreign European from a former shithouse country, with no understanding of the finer nuances of political discourse in the US.
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Just FTR, @doctorow and everyone: I misread single-pray healthcare, and I thought, well, thanks for picking that up, but could you put it more clearly?
But I found Mother Jones got you covered…
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For presidents dropping dead or getting assassinated. Removing a president, especially one who may not want to be removed, seems to be another matter entirely.
Here’s the Forbes article where the quote comes from, where he is talking about increasing the earned income credit to more people who make less money in order to increase their income without upsetting the Apple cart. He talks about reasons why increasing the minimum wage would cause more problems than it would solve.
He might know more about the economy and how businesses would react to a $15 minimum wage hike then a lot of other people do. His arguments should be listened to; not just summarily dismissed because people don’t like them.
(Personally, I don’t think the earned income credit idea helps quite enough. But it may be a helpful first step. I am afraid that using welfare as a slapdash rigged guaranteed income for single income minimum wage households may be as good as we get until the boomers die out.)
Aaaaand that’s why I want nothing to do with any of those groups.
Sure, but now who are we talking about here? I was taking issue with a broad statement, I’m not really interested in debating how we should place individual politicians on the left/right spectrum one by one, that will make for a very long and tedious debate.
I agree that most Democratic politicians in the USA are de facto conservatives, but I also think our entire system of campaigning, elections and media coverage ensures that conservatives have the advantage. Until that changes the “true left” will always be out-spent and out-maneuvered. For the record, I am all for the DSA, but I’m not going to make a blanket dismissal of capitalism because of ideological orthodoxy.
[edited to add: Remember, communism and capitalism are human constructs, they aren’t natural laws like gravity or the speed of light, nor are they religious dogmas that can’t be questioned. The farther a society moves to the left towards “pure” communism is not a guarantee that everything will be perfect, nor that life will be better and the people happier than they would under a mixed economy.]
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It’s exactly the same regardless. This is why Ford followed Nixon. Death, resignation, assassination, removal all follow the same procedure.
Now, if a president and VP were to both be removed we would be in new territory. However, the process is still the same.
We are talking about different things. In all the cases you described, the president either stepped down on his own or was forcibly removed by outside powers.
The important point is “stays sharp”. If your president suffers from mental deterioration, he or she would have to be removed. In such a case you might have a president who actively resists removal and who’ll have active enablers, who’ll be helping him to stay president.
I’d call such a situation highly undesirable. Indeed, we seem to be close to witnessing it right now, the next years may get even more interesting.
Pope Benedict had the wisdom to step down. But it may well have played out differently.
I don’t think I understand what you’re driving at. There is succession (for an executive that is removed by forces external to the govt such as death or assassinatio), there is impeachment for executives deemed unfit for office by Congress and there is article 25 for executives deemed unfit by their cabinet members.
For context, the 20th C saw 17 presidents hold office (counting both McKinley and Clinton who overlapped their respective turns-of-century). Of them 5, nearly 1/3, exited office prematurely and everything was fine. Through war and national tragedies the mechanisms worked.
This whole thread started with me saying that I would prefer to seee Warren at the top of the ticket with Bernie at VP. Yes, I understand the concern of someone so old attaining office, but a) he wouldn’t be at the top of the ticket, anyway (in my scenario) and b) there are plenty of mechanisms both internal and external to remove him if the need arises. However, as I said previously, he seemed to weather the campaign better than anyone else and had just as rigorous a schedule, of not more because he both campaigned for down-ballot candidates and has continued campaign-style rallies and appearances to this day in addition to his Senatorial duties.
Meanwhile, we are currently in a scenario where the executive is exhibiting behavior that, if it isn’t mental decline per se, is sure erratic and unpredictable and the government continues to run just fine (even while the directorships of dozens of agencies remain vacant).
Again, I’m not saying I want Bernie at the top of the ticket or even necessarily on the ticket at all, but his mental stability is among the least of my concerns.
I hear ya, but I’ll bet Bernie is healthier than dopey donald.
I’m frankly not worried about Bernie’s health.
and people who voted for trump didn’t care that he was 70. They just wanted to throw a grenade into the political system.
They got chaos, of course.
I’d rather go with Bernie and get Peace. Of course, the real trick is to get Bernie-like folks into Congress and local government.
Vote, people.
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yup! that’s my big objection to Ms. Oprah
she has a tendency to buy into woo and BS. We really don’t need any more anti-science wackos, thank you.
on the plus side, Oprah really did earn every dime she has. She really IS a self-made woman. Something the dopey donald can’t say.
However her love of kooky ideas is not a good thing and disqualifies her from office. Sorry
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He is now. 10 years from now? Who knows. Reagan wasn’t displaying any obvious signs of age-related ailments when he started the job either.
But the question isn’t really “would we be better off with Bernie than Donald?” That’s a no-brainer, of course we would. The question before us is “all things considered, is Bernie the best candidate to lead the country from 2021-2029?” It would be irresponsible not to include his age as one of the factors to consider when answering that question.
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I get it which is why I always encourage people to vote in EVERY election and to vote for Berni-like candidates. We need people with those humane values. After all, Bernie won’t live forever (sadly).
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Totally agree. Politics isn’t a spectator sport and weighing in once every 4 years to pick between two candidates isn’t good enough.
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https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/blue-versus-green-rocking-the-byzantine-empire-113325928/
In the days of the Roman republic, the races featured four color-themed teams, the Reds, the Whites, the Greens and the Blues, each of which attracted fanatical support. By the sixth century A.D., after the western half of the empire fell, only two of these survived—the Greens had incorporated the Reds, and the Whites had been absorbed into the Blues. But the two remaining teams were wildly popular in the Eastern, or Byzantine, Empire, which had its capital at Constantinople, and their supporters were as passionate as ever—so much so that they were frequently responsible for bloody riots.
The Byzantine Empire at its height under the Emperor Justinian in c. 560. Map: Wikicommons.
Exactly what the Blues and the Greens stood for remains a matter of dispute among historians. For a long time it was thought that the two groups gradually evolved into what were essentially early political parties, the Blues representing the ruling classes and standing for religious orthodoxy, and the Greens being the party of the people. The Greens were also depicted as proponents of the highly divisive theology of Monophysitism, an influential heresy which held that Christ was not simultaneously divine and human but had only a single nature. (In the fifth and sixth centuries A.D., it threatened to tear the Byzantine Empire apart.) These views were vigorously challenged in the 1970s by Alan Cameron, not least on the grounds that the games were more important than politics in this period, and perfectly capable of arousing violent passions on their own. In 501, for example, the Greens ambushed the Blues in Constantinople’s amphitheater and massacred 3,000 of them. Four years later, in Antioch, there was a riot caused by the triumph of Porphyrius, a Green charioteer who had defected from the Blues.
Even Cameron concedes that this suggests that after about 500 the rivalry between the Greens and the Blues escalated and spread well outside Constantinople’s chariot racing track, the Hippodrome–a slightly smaller version of the Circus Maximus whose central importance to the capital is illustrated by its position directly adjacent to the main imperial palace. (Byzantine emperors had their own entrance to the arena, a passageway that led directly from the palace to their private box.) This friction came to a head during the reign of Justinian (c. 482-565), one of Byzantium’s greatest but most controversial emperors.
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I am sorry. It is my belief that if we have any more presidents born before 1950, it will be devastating for our country. And any presidents born before 1960 will be very bad for our country.
It doesn’t have to do with age, but rather the cultural mores of most people born within those age groups. We need to get past the Boomers and into Gen X and Millenial leadership in both the congress and the white house because we still believe we have a future to save. And we need to do this while we still have a future to save.
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