No. Obama couldn’t “close the gap” between himself and a “scorched earth” opposition that denied his legitimacy as President from the day of his Inauguration. He also had to deal with party members that ran away from him and refused to publicly support his positions at every opportunity and an extremely APATHETIC constituency who could not be BOTHERED to vote in 2010 and 2014, thus ensuring more entrenched “scorched earth” opposition.
IF Sanders gets the nomination, and IF he gets elected, he should expect more of the same, doubled-down with the blatant racism replaced with antisemitism and “Red Scare” tactics.
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The more he talks and is exposed to the public, the less realistic all this becomes.
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I guess I’m not alone hearing too much “thousands and thousands” “millions and millions” recently.
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I’d have more confidence in this if the data actually showed that Bernie was bringing “millions” of new people into the process. The results in Iowa and NH largely show that he’s pulling in the same groups that usually vote for Democrats (well, when they bother to show up) and not in the huge numbers that’d imply a budding “revolution”.
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Bernie couldn’t even close the gap between himself and the Democratic party.
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Yeah, Saint Bernie, it’s all on him.
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Absolutely spot on. It’s delusional thinking and there’s no other way to spin it.
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I so wish that were true. God, how I wish.
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Remember when Obama went out of his way to go back into an interview to make it clear he’s not a Socialist? Bernie is smoking his own dope if he thinks the The American People™ want the real thing.
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This feels like anti-vaxxers to me. It’s like we can go with what we ‘believe’ based on scant or no evidence because we haven’t experienced the ravages of polio or death by measles in our lifetime. There’s a reason for that, it’s called vaccines.
This feels the same.
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You know, if Sanders gets elected he’ll find himself in the same position as Cruz - he’ll get zero support in Congress, even from his own party. On the “left” we have mostly DINOs. On the right you have Rethugs and Teabaggers. There aren’t enough Teabaggers to support who would be “their” president and so we face another X number of years of gridlock. The only thing that could change this is Dems picking up 100 seats in the House and eighth in the Senate, and it ain’t going to happen.
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My usually level-headed colleagues here on the TPM commenting boards are shocked that a presidential candidate (who just won a primary) would dare to communicate with a mind toward advancing a rationale for his candidacy!
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The important word here is required, an almost tacit admission that it will be nearly impossible to get his proposals done. They are good in theory but there is simply no evidence that the country as a whole is ready for a big political revolution. I think it will get there with a slow building progress, but that is not at all what he is offering.
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But have no fear Bernie will be able to because the republican controlled congress can;t wait to deal with a socialist,
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Well, maybe it’s about color. You see, since the Republicans are so adamant about not working with the black “socialist,” perhaps they’ll work with a white one.
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To piggyback on the idea you just brought up, I’d like to see just how many Dems on the down ballot races are running on his Sanderscentric platform.
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The biggest problem I have with Sen Sanders and his “revolution” is that he is attempting to do it backwards, and not being honest in how he explains it to his followers. A revolution is the FIRST step, i.e., getting people together for a common purpose to demand change, happens BEFORE you elect the leader to implement those changes. Sanders says he’ll do it the reverse way - elect him as leader and THEN the revolution will demand change. It doesn’t work that way. As others have noted, getting folks inspired to vote in a single election is NOT a revolution. The key to success is what happens at the bottom of the ladder, i.e., the grassroots, where change starts to happen and percolates upward. Sen Sanders says in his revolution it will happen from the top down. It will never work and he is leading his followers off the proverbial cliff - in this case the possibility of a Republican President, or at best a Sanders presidency that gets absolutely nothing accomplished leading to further cynicism among his rabid followers.
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So, we’re sticking with the Green Lantern Theory of the Presidency? Sure, why not…
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^^^THIS^^^^
You make a very cogent point.
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Bernie comes from the Fournier school of presidential power.
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