I don’t think so. $1 here and $5 there adds up, and Bernie raised almost as much as HRC this way in the last quarter.
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There is no accountability mechanism except for the next (and last) time that candidate runs for President. Sanders will no doubt have more integrity on following through on election promises than Clinton (or Obama for that matter). But Clinton will be hungry for a second term in a way that Sanders won’t, so perhaps we can hold her feet to the fire with the Sanders policies she’s forced to adopt, at least for the first term.
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Sam, Bernie has been working across the aisle his entire career and has a sizable list of accomplishments. HRC, on the other hand, has been pissing people off ever since the “baking cookies” comment.
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Right. The way we’ve “held Obama’s feet to the fire” or anyone else in the past, say, 4 decades. Here’s another line everyone kept telling themselves 4 years ago: “This time, Obama’s really going to take action because he won’t have to worry about being re-elected. He won’t try to please the Republicans anymore!”
CUT TO: The Trans Pacific Partnership.
How long do people want to maintain this charade?
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I don’t think she will do better than Obama. She’ll probably do worse. But so will Sanders, for different reasons. The GOP has made sure that crazy obstructionists control the House, and they’ll react just as badly to Sanders as they will to Hillary.
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I don’t think she does want to get things done or enact real change, which is why I wouldn’t vote for her. If I tell you I was her Senatorial constituent in 2003 you’ll understand why.
So you’re not swaying me here, because I already know all these things and agree with you. The only positive thing I think she will get done as President is make good SCOTUS nominations, and sadly that’s the best I can expect on this go-round.
I support Sanders in the primaries because I like his position but also because (as I said) the more support he has from liberal and progressive organisations the more pressure will be put on Clinton. But I’m also realistic about his chances both there and in the general and am looking at alternate ways he can influence things for the better.
That was the critical mistake during Obama’s first term: with the exception of ACA (which itself is compromised) the hope-and-change stuff went out the window and no-one called him on it in 2012.
Pressure from the Sanders campaign has already made Clinton publicly backpedal on her earlier support for the TPP. That’s not to say she won’t pedal right forward on it again (she probably will) but if current Sanders supporters tell her after the primaries that there’s no second term if she supports it as-is then she might be motivated to either make the necessary changes or at least try to postpone it until after 2020.
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I don’t think he’d have any issue with moving his position if he was freed from needing to get elected in Vermont.
I recommend checking out the <a href=“https://bbs.boingboing.net/t/why-or-why-not-to-vote-for-bernie-sanders/59394"target=”_blank">Why or (Why not) vote for Sanders comment thread. The grassroots working to get Sanders elected understand where they went wrong with Obama. There’s a concerted effort underway to make sure the mid-terms in '18 will have plenty of progressive Democrats on the ballot with the intent of changing the face of Congress.
You’re being a fatalist here, and it’s bumming me out. Stahp.
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As long as Sanders supporters (like myself) are being realistic about what needs to be done, I’m cool with it. Letting the Dem nominee know he or she will be under the microscope during the first term is one of those things. Paying more attention in the mid-terms is another.
HRC is basically a moderate Republican who is pro-choice. Her foreign policy? War and drone strikes, baby. NSA spying? Great!
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You’re realistic about some things, but then believing there’s even a remote chance that President Clinton will give two shits about anything you or any progressive constituency cares about is incredibly naive. Maybe you’re right about how the election will turn out, but if you are, make no mistake about it- there is no microscope. Americans aren’t going to do shit, and there’s absolutely no hammer of accountability riding over anyone… sadly, but truly.
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Thank you for the laugh. I nearly spit out my coffee on that one.
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I do think she needs progressive constituencies to make her margin in the always tight general election - Clinton is all about votes and the power and money they bring. And progressive constituencies have to understand that they have to continue to put pressure on their candidate after he or she is elected.
MoveOn is a good example in that regard. During the Bush years I’d get e-mail calls to action from them almost every day on whatever awfulness the boy prince and his sinister regent were up to. During the Obama years the e-mail volume went down and never criticised his failures to follow up on his campaign promises – any calls to action were usually about supporting him against GOP opposition in the House and Senate.
Assuming the best case scenario, where Sanders wins the primary and then the general, progressive groups cannot make the same error of assuming he’d be a one-man saviour they did with Obama – even understanding that Sanders has more integrity. That’s even more true should the nominee be Clinton, who has less integrity than Obama.
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It’s the nationwide voters that picked him, not the organization itself.
You may want to pause your naysayer mode and think about how ridiculous it sounds to say that a landslide, nationwide vote among hundreds of thousands of likely Democratic voters portends poor turnout for Sanders.
Does this nationwide landslide vote in Bernie’s favor below also spell doom and gloom?
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The people voting for Bernie in Democracy for America or MoveOn polls are, like myself and perhaps yourself, members of a liberal/progressive organisation. We’re talking about high-information, activist voters on the left who of course would choose Sanders over Clinton in a landslide.
It’s not doom-and-gloom to point out that not every Dem voter is like that. For example, even if you generously assume that for every one of those MoveOn voters there are 99 others like them out there and even if you add in the assumption that 100% of them support Sanders, that still leaves (by the count of the 2008 general election) another 39-million Dem voters who aren’t high-info liberal activist voters. A lot of those voters just vote on name recognition, or are DLC types or blue-collar Dems who are scared of socialists, or who turned out to vote especially for Obama because they were motivated to elect the first African-American President.
I agree and I donate money to his campaign even though I doubt he can get elected.
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The money and support isn’t wasted, either. In the worst case scenario it ends up pushing Clinton to the left, toward acting like the kind of Dem that pre-dated her husband.
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That’s terribly oversimplified. A huge factor in GOP growth has been the fault of the establishment wing of the Democratic party. They’ve managed to mutually support the corporatist right in collusion with Republicans and Americans are increasingly wise to this fact.
Establishment Democrats are mostly to blame for the poor voter turnout from disillusioned, apathetic Americans who are sick of corporatist Democrats. Poor turnout via apathy tends to greatly enable Republicans.
Bernie Sanders is now riding on a massive, ever growing hydra of grassroots movements that are aligning themselves to place him in the White House and unseat obstructionist Republicans and bluedog, establishment Democrats after he’s elected.
If you bothered to show up to our nationwide meetings you’d know this plan. Where were you back in July when we had our massive, nationwide, meeting all across this nation with Bernie?
Frankly, you seem uninformed and pretending to speak from authority on this topic.
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You’re being ridiculous and spouting errant opinions as fact yet again. Obama started with vastly less name recognition than Hillary and defeated her.
I get it. You’ve got your naysayer hat on and now you’ve backed yourself into a corner. You just don’t have the facts on your side.
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No doubt the DNC is partially at fault for GOP control of the House – for reasons that make no sense to me given our 2-party system they basically allowed their rival party to get away with the gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement and other cheats.
And yes, the DNC’s continued adherence to Third Way/DLC neoliberal thinking has left a lot of voters disillusioned. This is why I think Sanders’ supporters are so important, even if the DNC and the establishment superdelegates remain in the tank for Clinton this year – it shows them there’s a real demand for something different, and that they’d better get on board if they don’t want to precede the GOP establishment into irrelevance.
I don’t need to attend a nationwide meeting to support Sanders on the issues or see how he can enact real changes within the party. But I also have no illusions that all Dem voters are high-information activist voters who do attend nationwide meetings.
I am glad to hear that hardcore Sanders supporters aren’t focusing on him as a saviour figure and that they’re giving equal weight to the down-ticket races and midterms.
