I am excited by Bernie. Is he for real?
Can Bernie Deliver?
I want to tell Bernie that “reality matters.”
Bernie Sanders makes me hope that the Dem Party may be able to come back to life as more than an a shell of loyalists who make politics a hobby or careerists who use party work to promote their ascent on the corporate ladder.
My dream would be to see the Bernie movement morph itself into the Democratic Party .. a party with clear ideals AND the grass roots organization needed to achieve those goals. What worries me abut Bernie is his campaign. As amazing as it has been, I see so far no effort to seed the US with local plantings .. the shrubbery and seedlings that could grow into a functional political party. The question I would like to see Bernie answer is this, “Senator Sanders, Tip O’Neill once said ‘All politics is local.’ Whether you are or are not nominated, how would you work to recreate the Democratic party to achieve your goals?”
What worries me about Bernie is the question of whether he has the ground game to govern if he is elected. To govern Bernie will need some pretty smart politicians willing to follow Bernie’s lead. Obama has failed in this part of his job. After election eight years ago, the grass roots went dry, without the fertilization of leadership from the White House.
Here in Blue Washington there are now almost no pols loyal to Obama and the state Democrats are so feckless that the likely candidate for the high prestige job of Congressperson from Seattle is a liberal Brahmani from Wall street who is running as a person of color. I actually like Pramila Jayapal but think Seattle deserves a higher profile individual more in the mold of Suzan Delbene. Worse, none of the purple districts now led by Repugnants, Reichert and Herrera, are likely to have any credible Democratic candidate.
Can Bernie do better? Let me put it this another way. The Tea Party is the model.
Whatever you or I think of the Republicans, the GOP has now been taken over by a Koch funded, grass roots organization that runs a ground game able to determine the membership of everything from the local school board to the US Senate. What looked like pure demagoguery .. meant as meat for the masses and fodder for Fox News… has become real policy.
Is Bernie more than another media mannikin? I know he wants to do great things but the Kochs also have concrete plans for their demagogues. In seeding their grass roots the Kochs have created a monster I am sure they did not expect.
Bernie’s voting record show how poorly demagoguery works in the real world .. the world of votes in Congress. Obviously many of these votes represented some sort of compromise.
I also worry that Bernie is a liberal idealogue.
Idealogue: an adherent of an ideology, especially one who is uncompromising and dogmatic.
Today’s GOP is made of of conservative idealogues who care less about the facts of economics, foreign geology, nuclear energy or biology than I do about the details of the recipes used by great French chefs. Idealogues know what they like and do not have to know how to cook. Today’s GOP voters do not care that messers Trump and Cruz, if either got elected, would be trying to govern a world where they simply do not understand what is real and what is fantasy.
So, I would also tell Bernie that facts matter. Trump and Cruz do not need facts because their agendas are abut destruction of today’s America rather than building for a new world. To be successful creating Bernie’s new world means more than creating a Democratic rival to the Tea Party. It means building a team of experts who can teach Bernie the facts about economics, science, environment, and energy. Too many of Bernie’s campaign memes are based on rhetoric. I worry that he may really believe some of the things he says about taxes, nuclear power, and even stem cell research.
His position on stem cell research is a good example. Bernie takes the same stand as the right to lifers .. an embryo, according to him is “human life.” He sells this to his followers with “I hate big pharma.” If he talked to any scientist he would be told that his stand is factually wrong .. whether he like pharma or not! Demagoguery can do harm. 
Other positions seem to me to be equally shallow. I am NOT an economist even though I do buy into Piketty’s ideas. I also find the salaries of Wall Street executives obscene. So I like the idea of an aggressive reform of the mega banks. That said, Bernie’s comments to the Daily News were at best off the cuff . Barney Frank, who wrote “Dodd-Frank” and is critical of Obama for not pushing it harder, is dismissive of Sanders’ lack of understanding of the issues. Elizabeth Warren herself has not endorsed any of these ideas of Sanders.
Another example where rhetoric and reality may conflict is the subject of H-1B visas. Sanders has been outspoken about his stance versus H-1B visas. H-1B visas are for temporary guest workers, supposedly so companies like Microsoft or Google can get the best talent. These programs may well be misused and Sanders
argues that the program allows corporations to give American jobs to foreign workers. That is hard to understand since H-1B visas are for temporary work.
In April, Sanders was one of 10 senators to seek an investigation into H-1B visas, citing concerns that the visas were being used to displace American workers. In 2008, Clinton said she supported raising the H-1B visa cap, according to
InfoWorld. “Foreign skilled workers contribute greatly to our technological development,” she said. “That is well understood in Silicon Valley.” It is not surprising the Sanders has little support from Silicon Valley. Frankly this stand sounds an awful lot like Ted Cruz.
The Sanders meme of demonizing Corporations also applies to Boeing. Sanders has called the Export Import bank an example of corporate welfare. “At a time when almost every major corporation in this country has shut down plants and outsourced millions of American jobs, we should not be providing corporate welfare to multi-national corporations through the Export-Import Bank” This sounds good but the reality is that Boeing’s sales are in competition with Aerobus, China, and Japan … ALL of which are building planes that compete with Boeing and ALL of which get state funds to subsidize their sales. I suspect this too is just rhetoric, baiting the French?
Maybe Bernie’s hairdresser knows where he stands on foreign policy. So far I am not sure where Sanders stands on any of the hard issues or even who he has as FP advisers. Again it is much too easy to demagogue about Syria or Venezuela. I pretty much know Hillary’s proposals. I do not know his. How would Bernie deal with Syria or Palestine? What would he do to defuse the conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia? Does he have any ideas about how to deal with trade between the US and China?
Bernie’s team needs expert advisers!
Tags: Bernie Sanders, Jefferson, liberal hypocrisy, Ongoing Presidential Campaign, Repugnants
Posted 07 Apr 2016 by theaveeditor
in Misc.
Excellent piece, voicing many of my own concerns and many more that I didn’t know much about. I’ve often criticized those folks to the left of me by reminding them that there is, in today’s Congress, a Tea Party Caucus, but there is NO Occupy Caucus.And there should be.
I’m old enough to remember the McGovern campaign in 1972 – a friend of mine wrote a wonderful campaign song called “Come Home America,” and we sent him off to South Dakota to sell it to the campaign. They almost had the deal closed, when the Eagleton affair raised its ugly head, and there went the campaign. At the 1976 Democratic convention, Massachusetts was able to proudly raise its banner and announce itself as the “I Told You So” state.
That being said, aside from saddling us with nearly 8 years of Richard Nixon, I think the McGovern campaign was a great success in the effect it had on the Democratic Party. I was also in Chicago in 1968 – another story I won’t bore you with – but the party that came out of the 1972 convention was a very different one than the one that came out of Chicago.
My point is that this time around, perhaps we can have our cake and eat it too. Hillary Clinton becomes our first woman president, and Bernie Sanders resumes his seat in the Senate where he and Elizabeth and Al and Kirsten and our two Washington State senators and as many more of them as we can get both support her efforts and push her to greater heights.
Here’s hoping for the best.
Great comment, thank you.
I think you give to little heed to a number of others across the country …Both of our senstors, the AG running for Boxer’s deat, Franken, Booker, etc. There is a lot of talent. What harms that talent is the lousy local effort as in Wastate.
Yes. Cory Booker, Sherrod Brown, Diane Feinstein, the guy from Wisconsin – I just woke up and can’t remember his name – plus many morek already there or trying to get there. Tammy Duckworth. The list goes on.
The problem here in Wastate is that Patty, Suzan, are seperated from the Dem’s machine. What is needed is aplace where the eelcted leaders take hold of the Party.