Discussion for article #246286
Could be that you have been primary focused on economic inequality/ the corruption of money during your campaign.
I happen to agree with Bernie that this is the biggest issue facing our country, but he has been primarily focused on it and not a wide swath.
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“We’re talking about dozens of issues so I’m not quite sure where Secretary Clinton is coming from,” he said.
Binders full of issues!
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What you talk about is what builds people’s impressions of you. It’s self-created.
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It’s Bernie’s version of Rubio’s “Obama knows exactly what he’s doing…”, where every question inevitably leads back to income inequality.
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Of course Sanders talks about other stuff – but then he usually circles back to big banks and campaign finance reform.
I was listening to him do so during one of the debates a while back, and it suddenly flashed into my head that if I asked him about an ingrown toenail, or chickweed in my garden he’d probably blame it all on Wall Street and billionaire contributors.
No, not everything can be blamed directly on rich people. Racism and ethnic enmities play as much a part of discrimination and poverty as wealth and finance. Hillary gets that, but I’m not sure Sanders does.
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Bernie makes very valid points about the economy. However, he seems to keep using the same message over and over again. We all know by now that outside events can quickly change a president’s focus. You have to be running on all the issues. I know many folks here support Bernie and it is great that his ideas are being discussed. But in November, voters will be looking for a candidate that is versed on all the issues. That can only be Hillary. The polls in Nevada showed that those who voted for Hillary did so because she is experienced and has the best chance of winning in November. Hillary’s win last night was sweet. To hear folks attack her voters because they belong to a union is insane. Union members are still a big part of the Dem Party.
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If that “single issue” is Economic Equality for all Americans, with some restrictions placed upon the staggering wealth-gathering-and-hoarding of the USA & the world’s rich people/corporations.
Without economic equality, no other problems can be effectively addressed.
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I think this line has worked well for her, so she’ll keep using it.
Technically it’s not true, of course, since he addresses many issues including
- health care
- college affordability
- Wall Street reform
- family and medical leave
- minimum wage
- income inequality
- infrastructure
- criminal justice reform
- campaign finance reform
- global warming
- trade policy
…and on and on.
[In fact, I’m not even quite sure which issue she’s saying is his “single issue” – I guess either Wall Street reform or income inequality or campaign finance reform (related and overlapping issues, but also issues in their own right). though I’m not sure she’s actually specified. In some cases she’s appeared to imply that the "single issue’ is breaking up the big banks, in other cases she’s appeared to imply the “single issue” is campaign finance reform. Perhaps some reporter will ask her to clarify? I know, probably too much to ask from our intrepid stenograhers.]
But if this line of criticism has been working with a significant number of voters – and I think it has – that would indicate that the criticism is resonating, based on a perception that he is, to some extent, a “single issue” candidate – even if that “single” issue is more like a composite of Income Inequality, Wall Street and Big Money in Politics.
As Josh Marshall has noted, one of Bernie’s strengths is that he manages to weave these issues (and to a large extent many of the other issues he mentions) together into a single narrative about the way the political and economic system is “rigged” against everyday people, and in favor of the 1%. Which in many ways it is, and this has resonated powerfully with more than a few Democratic primary voters. But it is this very coherence that makes it easier to portray him as a “single issue” candidate, though technically it might be more accurate to call him a “single theme” candidate.
In that sense she is attacking from one of her own weaknesses (perceived lack of a clear, cohesive, unifying theme), toward one of his strengths (perceived clarity and cohesion of vision) – making her weakness a strength, and his strength a weakness. A classic “Rovian” strategy – and I do NOT mean that as a put-down, it’s smart strategy. There are several approaches the Sanders campaign could take to counter this argument, and it’s not clear to me that they’ve settled on one yet.
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Yes, everything can be blamed on rich people, when those rich rule the world. We’re not talking about people with enough money to have a 2nd home with a pool, and maybe own a small private plane & yacht… we’re talking about people with BILLIONS of dollars using that money to acquire ever more money and a lot of power which they openly use to harm the 99.9% of humanity (see Flint, Michigan); while destroying the entire planet in the process.
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Really? All I ever hears is: “oligarchy,” “Wall Street,” and “Goldman Sachs.” Maybe that’s 3 issues he thinks.
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I suspect they both understand quite well that racism and ethnic enmities both reinforce economic inequality, and are reinforced by it.
It’s more of a question of where you put your emphasis as you try to change both. Hillary is playing the “identity politics” angle for all it’s worth, which is still the winning game in the Democratic nomination. Bernie is emphasizing the “we’re all in this together” economic argument, which is, depending on your view of the way history is unfolding, either the last gasp of an outdated strategy, leftover from the economics-based “old left,” or the natural return of a unifying message after a several-decades-long excursion into an era when identity politics were shotgun-married to moderate Clintonian economic and trade policy.
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It’s definitional and attitudinal for a real socialist of whatever stripe, from harsh Bolshivik to neo-Marxian academic to warm, cuddly social democrat. All issues have their roots in class struggle.
Not a criticism, just an observation.
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Not only does Sanders only speak on one issue, his understanding of that issue and how to solve it is problematic.
The size of the banks did not cause the recession. Glass/steagle would NOT have prevented the recession. It was the over leveraged position of none banks, Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros. AIG ins. Countrywide mortgage…
And he does not offer a solution other than Glass/Steagle that would not solve the problem.
Notice in his litany of issues, gun control is absent.
He is a one issue candidate with a flawed solution to that issue.
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Welp.
We’ve got Bernie’s people out this morning calling Delores Huerta a crook and a liar. https://twitter.com/KateHarding/status/701431981628739584
We’ve got Bernie’s surrogates out this morning tweeting out garbage about Bill Clinton’s sex life. https://twitter.com/armandodkos/status/701423872118300672
We’ve got Bernie’s people out with a new meme about Martin Luther King, Jr. worried about a “man who marched with me is going to lose to a girl”. https://twitter.com/JillFilipovic/status/701395023674343424
Note: when you are impugning the character of John Lews and calling Dolores Huerta a liar and reducing Secretary Clinton to a “girl” maybe it’s time to tweak your message a bit.
Fanatic white college leftists and warmed-over naderites just isn’t a big enough demographic to win this thing, kids.
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Yeah I thought so myself when they impugned Paul Krugman, Gloria Steinem and the 4 economists who wrote the open letter about Bernie’s financial ideas and plans.
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Really? All I ever hears is: “oligarchy,” “Wall Street,” and “Goldman Sachs.” Maybe that’s 3 issues he thinks.
Maybe that’s because you’e not really listening. He actually talks about a range of issues. Perhaps because he ties them all in to a broken political process controlled by financial sources, you don’t see what he is saying. He is, of course, correct. Open your ears. Hillary, with all her fine wonkery, is actually part of the problem.
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I would hope that one item they may reconsider is to stop making unrealistic proposals and raising expectations about what can be accomplished in the current political climate (GOP control of Congress, the House by a huge margin). I would include in that climate the Citizen’s United ruling, which makes it necessary to conduct elections by Wall Street rules. Not something that Hillary wants, but neither is it something that Sanders can make go away. Not without Congressional majorities and control of the Supreme Court.
I also feel that income and wealth inequality and racism the most important issues facing us. They are related, but not the same. If somehow he managed to solve economic inequality for the white majority, perhaps they wouldn’t care too much whether that “solution” extended to African-Americans.
I don’t know if a President Clinton will be as strong on the issue of economic inequality as Sanders would be, but what we need now is someone who can put out fires in a lot of different areas, be very strong against Republican lies and bullshit, and build for the future (incrementally, I proudly affirm). Hillary seems to me to be a much better choice than Sanders for doing that, in fact, better than Obama would be in a hypothetical third term. I am looking forward to giving her that chance, and seeing how well she will do.
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either the last gasp of an outdated strategy, leftover from the economics-based "old left,"or the natural return of a unifying message after a several-decades-long excursion into an era when identity politics were shotgun-married to moderate Clintonian economic and trade policy.
I’d put my money on the latter. Clintonian eonomics - kow towing to finance and questionable trade policies, have been quite deleterious to the common good.
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Hillary, on the other hand, is merely promising to “remove every single barrier” holding people back. That should be a snap. If only Obama had thought of that, we’d all be living in utopia by now.
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