Well, the most enthusiastic supporters anyway. And most of them are definitely good people. But then on the other hand I just saw some guy claiming that the only reason people are criticizing caucuses for being anti-democratic and exclusionary is that Bernie’s going to win HUGELY in Iowa and The Establishment needs to have a narrative in place to downplay it. Which doesn’t explain why I’ve heard all the same complaints about caucuses since the 90s and usually it’s the most Establishment candidate who wins in Iowa?
Anyway, none of you all seem to be like that, and I appreciate you a lot for it.
Paraphrasing from someone else: while any Democratic nominated to office will get blockaded at every interval by Mitch McConnell’s intransigent congressional majority, Sanders is the only candidate I see who would push hard enough against them to accelerate the friction between the populace and these profoundly corrupt enablers of corporate power.
Every other Democratic candidate will likely fold the moment they find out that no amount of compromise will get bipartisan support for their policies, leading to more of the same mass societal apathy that plagued Obama’s second term.
See, I’m not even concerned about the bipartisan support. It’s getting moderate Democrats on board for big changes that I think is going to be the big lift in the coming years. You aren’t getting M4A or a Green New Deal out of the Senate when the deciding votes are Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, and Jacky Rosen without a sustained push from a grassroots level, and that’s the kind of thing I’m hoping the Sanders theory of a permanent campaign can provide.
Even then, there’s still the Supreme Court to rain on everyone’s parade, but let’s eat this elephant one bite at a time.
I posted on Twitter about it but just wanted to say this podcast really gave me the push I needed to get out there and get involved. I’ve been donating for a few months now but it was really encouraging to hear this podcast and I went to 2 Bernie events this weekend (one Barnstorm and one canvas) for the California primary and have more scheduled for the following weekends before we vote in a month. Canvasing was really fun and a lot less scary than I had thought and it was good to get out and meet volunteers and talk to people about what’s important to them. Really hoping for a good result from Iowa today to give us a boost!
As a non-American, it was interesting to listen to this after also listening to the recent Behind The Bastards episode that focused on the Black Panthers, which touched on the fight for representation within the DNC in the 60s and 70s. The frequent mentions of groups who have a worry that they would “get thrown under the bus” at the first convenient moment is real.
I’m always looking at those European countries that have like, 5 party coalitions in government and 12 parties contesting every election. That seems so much nicer, because you can have a legitimate far left party to vote for. They’ll likely never govern in a majority, but neither will anyone else. You don’t have to just hold your nose and vote for the least worst option, then listen to folks talk about mandates while screwing your communities over.
The times where America has written constitutions for other countries (Japan and Iraq come to mind), they never replicate ours. It’s always a parliamentary system of some kind. There’s a reason for that.
DNC sycophants, conservatives and overpaid opinion havers: I’m not mad, I’m actually laughing. It’s actually funny, To Me.
@MasqueradeOverture I apologize if this sounds mean, but that would be fucking awful. Even if you find Sanders or Warren’s positions disagreeable, I beg you not to side with the two guys that Trump would absolutely, positively, decimate.
Literally, Trump just has to mention that Biden’s a creep, or his hand in the Clinton crime bill, or Pete’s suspicious ties to the intelligence community and Mckinsey and the bread pricing shit and it would be over, immediately
They just approved a fake new branch of the military and they wholesale fabricated money out of thin air to bail out the banks after 2009 but go off I guess.
Leave it to a bunch of white folk shuffling around a room for hours to yield confusing results. Also, not one of them would pick where to go for dinner.
We can deficit spend a lot and there’s no tangible negative effects from it, the government isn’t a household and you can’t treat its budget like yours. As long as the government deficit spends USD it’s not as big a deal because the US government makes its money. You can’t spend unlimited amounts but you can spend way more than you have in that situation.
Not to mention that the government spending money on things like climate change, M4A, etc… that’s money going into the US economy to be spent and taxed and somewhat recouped. That’s not even taking into account the deficit is sold off to rich people and other countries in the form of Treasury bills and bonds to cover the spending in the short term.
Creating a deficit with tax cuts can create the same deficit but that money doesn’t go into the economy and a government creating a surplus is sucking money out of the economy.
There is a point at which the interest payments on the debt you accrue start to play havoc with your ability to run deficits (it’s extremely late and I read Paul Krugman’s book 10 years ago), but we’re not in that circumstance currently. Besides, if you’re worried about deficits, it’s not like Jeff Bezos didn’t make $850,000 in the time it took me to write this post.
I’m on the west coast, but even here, I’m starting to wonder if I’ll see the Iowa results before midnight. Caucuses are so archaic, so I’m not surprised trying to introduce an app to the mix seems to be at least partially responsible for the delay.
Both things that should’ve never been done, yes (let’s add the Trump tax cuts to that list while we’re at it).
However, let’s also not make it any worse by spending enough to force massive tax increases to the middle class. Raising taxes on just the rich, a carbon tax, and slashing military spending will be nowhere near enough to pay what he’s proposing.
There are, of course, plenty of reports that suggest we could afford it - that it could cost less than our current system, even. However, frankly, even if implementing universal healthcare was guaranteed to hit our economy, I would happily take a weakening dollar or even cuts to other programs to keep people alive, not letting anyone die of treatable conditions or die as a result of debts incurred treating them.
