And yet we see across the world, in all of the industrialised countries that have socialised medicine (i.e. everywhere except the US), that healthcare is still a highly profitable industry that provides a large number of middle-class and higher jobs.
It’s almost as if having a collection of huge parasitic rent collectors squatting on top of an essential service with a captive market isn’t actually that beneficial to an economy.
Go figure.
Not sure why you think that would change. It certainly hasn’t in any other Western nation, none of which have your country’s incredibly jacked-up per capita costs. The need for medical professionals doesn’t go away, after all.
The price gouging does go away, however, and the outcomes are usually better as a result. In my own country, the average lifespan is about 3 years more for about half the per capita expenditures, which is a significant difference.
The family down the street who put a Sanders sign in their yard last week are very much not activists. Just a middle class family. I see more Sanders bumper stickers every week. They’re on pretty average cars driven by pretty average people of a fairly wide age range. He’s getting support from wider demographics every week. I’m cautiously optimistic about his chances, they’re only improving.
Pundits always think there is the right, the left, and then the reasonable middle, but the reality of the US right now is that the majority of the populace is to the left of the left-wing party (as are facts and reason).
DAMN straight!
Everyone keeps saying all of these things are disadvantages. No one really understands what wins elections - pundit are as useful as fad diets - and every theory people have that even works is right only until it is wrong. The only thing that is predictable is that one day the way to win will be turned on its head because the people have an immune system against manipulation - it takes time to adapt but it will. One of these days a sincere candidate with integrity will win (and, sure, some time later someone who mimics that kind of sincerity will win and things will devolve until it breaks again). My bet is that happens this year.
I asked this question in the why to vote for sanders thread and got a very good answer. If Bernie wins then it proves that people power can beat corporate money, and then its time to start putting people into congress and the senate who will stand up for principles as well (and empowering those who are already there who would be better if they didn’t keep hearing how they couldn’t win if they were). If Bernie wins it’s possible he’ll be blocked from doing much, but it’s also extremely possible that he will have a lot of elected officials running scared of their constituents, thinking that if they don’t deliver real change they’ll be out at the next opportunity.
Somebody recently said that if Republicans said the earth is flat, and Democrats said it’s round, the Washington Post would run an editorial the next day pronouncing it to be a semicircle.
[quote=“gracchus, post:14, topic:72039”]
I’d vote for Sanders over Clinton any day, but their chances are about equal in the general
[/quote]Er, what?
You haven’t been keeping up. Sanders is a much safer bet. Even the mainstream polls that are terribly skewed against Sanders show him beating the Republicans in landslides. As a matter of fact, Hillary is increasingly becoming a liability who may very well lose to a Republican candidate.
Breaking News from Gracchus: The establishment is working against an anti-establishment candidate.
Bernie Sanders is an Independent running on a Democratic ticket as a reformist. Why on Earth would the establishment (that he’s set to reform) welcome Bernie with open arms?
You don’t appear informed to the fact that we very much accounted for this resistance from the very beginning. The more the DNC overtly works against Sanders, the more he solidifies donations and votes via the growing anti-establishment sentiment in this country.
Suggested reading: The Art of War
[quote=“gracchus, post:36, topic:72039”]
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.[/quote]I hate to knock your naysayer hat into the dirt, however, these mainstream Democratic organizations are representing a mainstream, national shift of Democratic voters against Clinton.
Do your research — These are not fringe organizations.
MoveOn and DFA are mainstream Democratic organizations that represent huge swaths of likely Democratic voters across this nation. Unlike the rest of the nation that doesn’t vote at all, these people represent those that actually vote for Democrats and the rest will be new voters, independents and switch-hitters.
And, if you think new Democratic voters are mobilized to vote for Hillary and not Sanders in 2016, you’re grossly misinformed. New voters are anti-establishment and coming out for Bernie just as they did for Obama against Clinton.
Left-leaning American voters have been typically higher-information. This is exactly why Bernie Sanders can win against Hillary Clinton as information on the two candidates inevitably disseminates via online/offline vehicles. The corporate media can’t squelch information as effectively as they used do to. That’s why despite some of their media blackouts, his events garner enormous crowds via grassroots word-of-mouth (and think about how that applies to ‘get out the vote’ later as well).
Also, the majority of MoveOn and DFA supporters are not all activists (as you portend) by any stretch of the imagination. They are mostly a collection of average, mainstream Americans who are likely Democratic voters and send donations to help support the Clintons and then later Obama. As a matter of fact, the DFA establishment (Howard Dean) endorsed Clinton in this race and MoveOn was set up in the first place for Bill Clinton. The establishment is eating itself thanks to Bernie Sanders and the massive, grassroots dynamic that surrounds and supports him.
[quote=“gracchus, post:45, topic:72039”]
running at the moment at about 50-50 with Sanders in the more mainstream Dem polls [/quote]
You should look at the methodologies of the mainstream polls. They are antiquated and skewed against potential Sanders voters by focusing far too much on landlines and too little on social media indicators that are increasingly important in 2015-2016.
When actual, widespread, nationwide votes are put to the test across a large base of potential Democratic voters, we see Bernie Sanders winning with consistent landslides. Keep in mind, these are not typical political landslide margins. He’s wiping the floor against Hillary with ~70-90 percent of the vote.
Hillary’s $101 MM includes money from her super pac. Her campaign and Bernie’s are at about the same amount.
The plan has been for a long while now that the same grassroots organizations and supporters that get Bernie Sanders elected will ramp it up afterwards to get out the vote and unseat obstructionist Republicans and bluedog, establishment Democrats who attempt to stand in our way.
That was almost the entire point of this historic, nationwide meeting back in July 29th of 2015 at thousands of locations across the nation with over a hundred thousand supporters:
And, we’re still growing and getting vastly stronger since then:
Don’t look to the corporatist media to report on our grassroots strength and plans to unseat corporatists. Why the hell would they? They hope you’ll surrender to apathy based upon misinformation instead.
This is the point to make, I think. In the context of any other Western nation, Sanders is a moderate - centre-left maybe. That’s not a measure of how far left those nations travelled since, say, the '70s: It’s a measure of how far right the USA has travelled since then.
You’re correct (but not in the way you meant), they’ll love Bernie Sanders much more than Obama.
Bernie Sanders has already exceeded Obama in crowds, donors and nationwide, average polls. As a matter of fact, Sanders is well ahead of where Obama was during this same time period during his primary race with Clinton.
The only thing holding back Sanders against Hillary is the perception that Hillary is the anointed primary winner.
It’s time to shatter that misconception.
Source - (tracking 230 national, mainstream polls from 29 pollsters)
No good, he’s a Foreign.
I saw winning the Powerball as a larger hurdle to clear, to be honest.
You’ll note that at the end of those polls they say that it’s because his performance is stronger with independent voters, who don’t always show up on voting day (especially after their candidate officially identifies himself with a party they mistrust). Take them out of the equation and they’re back to 50-50.
Speaking of the party, do you really think that Sanders can win the general without the full support of the party and its resources if he somehow defies them and gets the nomination? In some ways I think Sanders would have been better off running as an independent from the start, and ushering the DNC into irrelevance that way. If his support is at the levels you claim later in your comment then he could have taken over the Dems Tea Party style, starting with MoveOn and perhaps DFA members (though not the orgs) who act as a vanguard.
High-information/activist voters != fringe voters. Between members of MoveOn and DFA and Dems who don’t vote there are a whole swath of low-information/once-every-4-years Dem voters. That group isn’t as big as its counterparts on the GOP side, but it’s still the majority of the voting base.
MoveOn and DFA are mainstream, in that they’ve had 8 years to re-make the DNC (at least from what I’ve seen of MoveOn’s mailings) did zero in that direction. Neither did anything but kiss Wasserman-Schultz’s arse, and neither challenged Clinton’s coronation until Sanders started showing real strength.
I’ll agree that the mainstream polls are skewed in favour of older respondents, but a 30-40% difference from the mainstream polls cannot be accounted for by the youth vote alone. I’m interested in seeing the non-mainstream polls you mention and how they break down.
Do you think they’ll just sit back and hand the election to Cruz or Rubio instead?
I don’t think Sanders has the same positive charisma and youthful charm that Obama has. That’s fine, because he’s more like gruff Uncle Bernie who always tells the kids the hard truths, but that doesn’t have the same broad appeal in the general election where things unfortunately get more superficial.* It’s not self-defeating behaviour to point out the realities of general elections, just as it’s not naysaying to highlight how much the game is still rigged against Sanders by the party.
Clinton’s popular anointment is now ashes in her mouth. The only thing holding back Sanders against Clinton is the DNC and the realities of modern American elections. There’s not much to be done about the latter, but if Clinton does prevail as nominee anyhow I hope you’ll put this zeal toward destroying the DNC and re-making or replacing the Democratic Party. I also hope Sanders will lead that charge.
By the way, in a debate elsewhere with a Clinton supporter I was told that Sanders promised to support her unconditionally (i.e. no insistence on platform changes) if she won. That doesn’t make sense to me, since he got into this initially to push Dem policy back toward the left. What’s your take on that?
[* ETA: it would actually be great if Millenials were responding to that, because it would show they’re aware of the gravity of their own situation.]
Yeah, I think they just might. They’ve demonstrated by their actions so far that they really don’t want a socialist and Democrat of 1 year’s vintage representing the party, and I can easily see them making a weaker effort so he loses just to “prove” that a Third Way party loyalist like Clinton would have been the better choice. If he does get the nomination we’re all going to have to watch them like hawks.
Yes, they have the same amount of money, if you ignore the reality of Hillary’s PAC. Also, lemon juice and lemonade are the same thing, because we’re pretending that sugar doesn’t exist.
Actually, the republicans put Obama’s name on it.
Then they dodged to the right of their own plan, making democrats out to be dangerous communists for defending the republican approach to health care - once again shifting the “centre” of American political discourse.
I think the biggest problem here is that Clinton would tend to get more done because there’s more she agrees with the conservatives in Congress about. The stuff she’ll find bipartisan agreement on where Bernie wouldn’t is exactly the stuff I don’t want to see happen at all.
You seem to think they will be volunteering later, what a posture.
