Discussion: Sanders Fires Back At Washington Post After Non-Endorsement

Discussion for article #245229

Thatā€™s not a heckuva cogent response. ā€œNo Iā€™m not!ā€

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He gave it four Pinocchi-Berns.

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WAPO offered nothing cogent with which to argue.

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Given that a large part of his appeal is as the anti-establishment candidate, Iā€™m not sure that getting dumped on by establishment media doesnā€™t end up helping him more than it hurts. He should just borrow a line from FDR and say that he knows the establishment hates him, and that he ā€œwelcomes their hatred.ā€ :wink:

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Of course its fiction secretly they do not have national health care in the other great industrialized nations. After all if you pay $500 a month to insurance company for health care that is great if your taxes go up $500 month and you get free health care oh my god the end of the world, tax and spend tax and spend.

Sigh - But this is why Iā€™d be worried about a Bernie candidacy. Heā€™ll be forced to spend at least half of his time trying to explain that yes, heā€™s a socialist, but no, heā€™s not a loony radical. And it wonā€™t frankly make much difference that, of course, he isnā€™t any kind of radical at all, or that his ā€˜socialismā€™ is really just 1970s-era Democratic policies.

And all that will get through to a lot of otherwise persuadable voters is that the Democrats have nominated a Socialist, so why shouldnā€™t they worry that heā€™s going to collectivize agriculture, and maybe send people to re-education camps? I mean, the guy admits heā€™s a socialist!

Hillary, on the other hand, is old news. There really isnā€™t anything more that the GOP or a lazy press can do to her. People made up their minds about her a long time ago. This is, frankly, what a lot of us find unappealing about her. But it makes her a safer pick for the nomination.

None of this is fair, none of this is rational, but the result will be an election that the Dems could actually lose. To Donald Trump. So itā€™s fair to ask what the upside is in return for that risk. And as far as I can tell, itā€™s that the domestic policies HE will present dead-on-arrival to a Republican Congress will be far more progressive than the not-a-snowballā€™s-chance-in-hell proposals Hillary will make.

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Did I miss something? Because doesnā€™t he say that he is going to need a revolution to get the stuff he wants passed, to get passed? That the people are going to have rise up and demand the things he proposing, because he knows that the Republican held House of Reps (likely to remain so) and possibly Senate wonā€™t go along with anything he would propose.

So why is someone calling what heā€™s selling, unrealistic, or calling it radical, wrong?

For the record, I do like a lot of Bernieā€™s policies, and yeah, good luck with that revolution thing.

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The Washington Post editorial has clearly stated the very concerns I have about Sen Sanders. He is a ā€œvisionā€ candidate who makes pie-in-the-sky assurances that it will be easy to achieve all the wonderful things he talks about. While I give him credit for focusing attention on some important issues, I have ZERO confidence that he as President could accomplish ANY of his promises. Therefore he is misleading progressives and telling them only what they want to hear. I must prefer a candidate who has real solutions and pathways to achieve them. Obviously no candidate ever achieves everything he/she promises, but Sec Clinton has experience in how working with all sides to actually achieve something. In all of his years in Congress, Sen Sanders has actually achieved very little personally. And in his response to the Post he hasnā€™t actually explained WHY they are wrongā€¦

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The longer this election season goes on the more I wish for an Obama third term.

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WaPo, like most of corp media when it comes to Sanders, put out the written word version of putting their fingers in their ears while going, la-la-la-la-la. The ā€œpolitical revolutionā€ of which Sanders speaks scares the shit out of them because it upends the game from which they profit.

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You and me both bro ā€“ Iā€™d gladly vote Michelle Obama too.

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I like Bernie and I like Hillary - and I really understand the pros and cons of both. Regardless of which is nominated, I will donate to their campaign and crawl over glass to vote for either one of them in the general. I donā€™t expect congressional districts to favor Democrats until 2022 at the earliest, so I donā€™t expect anything substantive to get through congress until then, so itā€™s all about the Supreme Court. Iā€™m a single issue voter on that score.

Edit: Left off my point in my ramblingā€¦ I think HRC has a better chance to win though, so Iā€™m backing her in the primary. I donā€™t think her policies are significantly worse than Bernieā€™s and I donā€™t think they are any more achievable. So itā€™s all about the SCOTUS.

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So, today Bernie does a major pander to Democrats by suddenly introducing a bill to change the law he voted against twice, now he thinks itā€™s a good idea. You know, when it became a problem and introducing the bill, good grief could you pander any harder? Bernie canā€™t be bought, but Bernie will buy votes by totally flip flopping on something he has been defending now for months. What a fraud. And we hear from Martin Oā€™Malley that all this time Benrie has been publicly calling for more debates, behind the scenes he is the one who has been refusing to do them, not Hillary. He accused Hillary of conspiring to keep more debates out of the process, but it was him doing it, lying about it and lying to all his supporters about it. Heā€™s a fraud and a flake. Now watch the Berners bend over backwards to make these things totally acceptable in a campaign that is all about integrity. ā€œOh, heā€™s evolved on the gun issue.ā€ Right. Thatā€™s whatā€™s going on here.

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The claim is that economies of scale plus the efficiencies of NOT having to worry about profit margins and stockholder ire, can make a ā€œMedicare for Allā€ plan more affordable than what we have now. THe figure I have hard is that the overhead of Medicare is 3% administrative costs vs 18% profit margins for private insurance, but I may be misremembering.

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I modded a Bernie fanā€™s facebook meme to fit reality a bit better: The real revolutionā€¦

Huh? Lets just get away from the fact that The Post like all print news is a dying medium and just get to your point. It matters not who the President is. A Bernie Presidency does not foreshadow the death of corporate news unless he plans on closing them down, nor will he change they way they make what little money that comes their way.

And good grief the post is writing an opinion piece and opinion that many share. That in the end Bernie will have way over promised and progressives will be disappointed . . . again.

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yes and no, on a human level, I wouldnā€™t wish that upon him or his familyā€¦

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Well, to be fair, talk of breaking up the biggest banks so thereā€™s not an insane concentration of wealth and massive income disparity, and having true health insurance for all in America in a single-payer system, those are pretty radical ideasā€¦ theyā€™re not really radical, in my opinion, in that many people every day realize that they just make plain sense ā€” but they are radical because they still threaten an old, dysfunctional system that for decades has been convulsing with the spams of its own aimlessness.

Iā€™ll let Charlie Pierce do the honors: http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a41608/bernie-sanders-washington-post-response/

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