Great point! Also, what makes them think that 20K others across the state are not thinking the same idea? Once your vote is cast, it’s irretrievable.
edited for clarification.
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Better to have too many details than “If I had a piece of paper in front of me…”
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We didn’t realize they had planned to release the transcript.
In a day and age where interviewees are always complaining that they were taken out of context by the evil librul media, I guess “We didn’t realize the editors would try and provide full context for our statements” is a fairly novel complaint. Gotta give the Sanders camp that at least.
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Well, to be quite honest, its very disappointing to see a writer that was so highly touted when he signed on here, so completely adverse to the actual issues with single payer and transitioning to such a plan, even if it were possible.
His piece today is a pure rainbows and fairy dust piece…he wants to scrap everything in existence because its just too complicated and start over from scratch, cause that will make it all easier to understand.
First off, blowing up what is in existence is not just implausible and fanciful…let alone doing so because he thinks it all too complicated and that’s reason enough…its down right devastating to contemplate. And I am sorry, but nobody is going to design a health care system for 300+ million Americans spread across a nation our size and with our diversity and have it be simple.
Its a 4 year old’s vision of healthcare. I got a boo boo and I want Mommy to make it better and I don’t know nuthin’ about how she does it, and I don’t care. Just make my owie go away right now.
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You know the old truth: The candidate with the most corporate backing usually wins.
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These folks from the tiny, mostly rural state of Vermont have no idea at all about national politics and what the POTUS faces daily. Bernie’s time in Congress has all been low-profile, low risk. The whining by this pair if the GOP has a chance to go after them would be epic.
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Sorry, Carlos. Not in this case. She’s the better candidate. But keep touting that argument.
(That was definitely a waste of typing time. 
)
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The irony is, when I went and read the whole interview a few days ago, I didn’t see anything terribly awkward in Bernie’s answers and if anything it made me like him a little more.
Not allowing gun companies to be sued for how their product is misused after it’s sold is a valid position, just as we don’t sue car makers each time a drunk driver gets in an accident (though I’m not saying I agree with this position — just saying it’s a coherent position to have). And Bernie said he would use his executive authority under Dodd-Frank to break up the big banks for “systemic risk” but would work out the details with his economic team once he’s in office, which is the kind of dodge we hear from politicians all the time when they’re grilled on the specifics of tax policy, foreign policy, health care policy and the like.
Having trusted the Hillary camp when she said Bernie “hadn’t done his homework” and the media when they said his answers made him look bad, I was surprised to go to the actual text and find that, hey, here’s a mainstream progressive discourse that I agree with about 90%. He even seemed to be making an effort to stretch beyond his usual stump speech talking points and answer the questions in a comprehensive, thoughtful manner.
So basically this was neither (to me) the embarassment it was portrayed as by Hillary at the time, nor the ambush Jane Sanders is portraying it as now. It was simply the journalists and Bernie each doing their job of informing the voters about his beliefs.
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In fairness what else is he going to say about his healthcare plan? He has said about as much as one can about his plans for taxing the rich, healthcare for all, etc. I would love to see more discussion on these “proposals” but they always end with “go to my website blah blah.”
Good article in the American Prospect: http://prospect.org/article/strange-silence-about-sanders’s-tax-proposals
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Beliefs are fine. You have to have more concrete ideas to demonstrate how those beliefs can be turned into reality and who in Congress will support and work with you going forward.
That’s where Bernie fails and miserably.
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I’ve never understood how supposedly seasoned journalists can take comparisons of Sanders’ current national favorability vs Clinton’s seriously. You are essentially comparing the peak favorability of someone who has barely ever even been mentioned by the opposing side (and is frankly rooting for him in the primaries) vs someone who the Republicans have been campaigning against since the mid 90s.
And the Republican smear machine is ridiculously effective. Consider that in 2004 they managed to make a purple heart winner look like like he was a coward and made a draft dodger who hasnt spent a day in combat appear a hero. Although I guess wearing jumpsuits in front of Mission Accomplished signs on an aircraft carrier for a photo op counts for something.
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So much whining… If Sanders can’t deal with a tabloid, how can he handle the job of being President? Ih can’t sand the heat, he must get out of the kitchen. Or is he just the opposite side of the coin that has Trump on one side?
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I love your comment simply for your insistence on circumventing the cowardly closed-comments policy on TPM editors’ posts. It is the one aspect of this site that I always come back to when I consider becoming a Prime member. If their opinions are so fragile that they can’t be publicly scrutinized, I don’t know why they bother sharing them. And if they aren’t interested in feedback from readers, then they aren’t different enough from other news-and-politics publications to justify the investment.
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Or from other world leaders??
Maybe I agree with you (recall that this is why I support Hillary) — I’m just saying that this particular interview seems to have been blown out of proportion.
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On the contrary, it made people realize that he is not presidential material.
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Maybe if she did few interviews that offer little substance she would have time to finish their tax returns.
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I absolutely agree. Stupid and irresponsible hogwash.
It’s more than a little comical to hear somebody complain that a single interview was “like an inquisition” considering that her husband is directly criticizing one politician who has endured 8 years disgusting racism with nothing but calm, uncomplaining equanimity, and another associated politician who has faced relentless, paranoid, sexist conspiracy-mongering for 25 years—and is still willing to subject herself and her family to more abuse—in the other.
But I’m getting out my tiny violin just in case.
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No, it’s not a valid proposition. Cars have many valid uses beyond killing people.
A valid comparison is cigarette companies.
I would not necessarily disagree with a ruling that said gun companies would not be responsible for the use of their products, but to dismiss it outright at this stage is remarkable for someone who wants to be a democratic nominee. Even if the ruling itself does not go the way the plaintiffs want, the court procedure itself allows you to unearth a lot of stuff that the gun companies are hiding (including internal research on the safety/danger caused by guns, how gun companies have manipulated the media to the point that selling pink guns for 12 year olds does not raise eyebrows anymore, or how they managed to convert the NRA which was geared towards responsible gun usage and tips/tricks for hunters into a Frankensteinian combination of a political advocacy and corporate sales group). These were the tactics that worked against cigarette companies.
The fact that Bernie does not understand that at the very least such lawsuits are a tactic in the larger strategy of exposing the actual players and their shenanigans hiding behind the NRA facade is just another indication of him either not understanding how to accomplish change, or not caring about actually improving things.
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