Discussion for article #241855
I love Bernie. Conversations like this one will help him flesh out his argument.
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To get Americans to accept socialism give them no more, Medicaid, Medicare, social security, public schools, libraries, make them pay to use the roads and bridges. Maybe then theyâll get it.
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Senator Sanders is like a repairman that shows up to your house with no tools. he can troubleshoot the problem (in this case: crazy ass republicans) but he ainât going to fix shit.
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Bernie does not have his answer ready. He doesnât get it. I agree with him on the issues. But Maher is right that the terms âsocialistâ is toxic, and Bernie is avoiding it by circling back to issues. Itâs not gonna work. He needs to define the term as it applies to him, not through answers about his agenda punch-list, but by speaking in broad terms about what being a socialist democrat actually means (e.g., it means A, B, C, and it is not X, Y, Z). He has to do this, and he has to do this effectively, or he cannot win. Period. Until he can demonstrate an ability to put this issue to rest, I cannot support him in the primaries.
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I fail to see where talking about the issues is less important than a label. This is a constant tactic of the naysayers. Donât bother to discuss the merits or demerits of an argument, simply shout a name or label and deflect the conversation.
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Winning the election is important, is it not? He cannot win when a majority of people indicate they will never vote for a socialist.
Exactly. This will be the constant tactic of the GOP should Bernie win the nomination. And without a proper rebuttal, he will lose. Until he can demonstrate that he has an answer to that line of attack, he is DOA in my book.
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I like Sanders, but I felt he did a really terrible job here. He couldnât get off of his main talking points to actually talk about the nitty gritty of how he intends to do the things he says.
It was worrying.
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Spot on.
âMaher kept pushing the question to a flustered-looking Sanders,â
Are you sure we are talking about the same show I watched yesterday?
Sanders never looked âflustered,â. He did pause briefly - as thoughtful people sometimes do, when gathering their thoughts - before offering articulate replies to Maherâs questions and comments. He did give solutions on how to raise funds, mainly by taxing the billionaires.
Low-information voters in America are ignorant of what Democratic Socialism is that they donât even realize that it can be found all over Europe, that it does not end capitalism, and that the nations with strong Democratic Socialist parties enjoy some of the strongest and most stable economies, the best educated people, and the healthiest societies in the world.
Bernie can see what America could have become had it not been captured by the wealthy pirate war-mongers using US tax-payers to fund their personal adventures to capture oil or anything of value while supporting their dictators around the world.
Furthermore, a strong Sanders candidacy will make liberal Democrats feel that their opinions and their concerns are getting a fair hearing in the 2016 process. Sanders is an eloquent and unapologetic voice for liberalism. His presence as a real contender on the campaign trail would assure liberals that their party can still be a vehicle for their ideology, even if the candidate who triumphs is the more centrist establishment figure. And thatâs something we could use right now.
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Really, âflusteredâ? I was almost afraid to watch, thinking it would be semi-embarrassing, but I didnât see it.
This kind of invented spin on appearances in the media is what caused Gore to lose to Bush. Shouldnât we know better by now?
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Sanders is saying what everyone of his generation was saying back in the late 1960s and 70s. Everyone knew what we needed but none of them or us ever figured out how to get there in reality. It grabs everyoneâs attention now as it did then, but dreams without means are a blind, and often get us into real political hot water.
After all, we wanted more âsocialismâ then, but instead we got Nixon, as people of the left disdained Hubert Humphrey. Then there was a brief respite under Carter, who was the first target of the tactics of the right to discredit a president to the point of no return for him, largely because he was going in the right direction on most issues. Then Kennedy challenged him from âthe left,â and their battle almost to the death for the nomination left voters and money people exhausted and depleted.
Obama has clearly been effective in killing off the aura of the Reagan Right as invincible and âgood for the country.â He has been able to do quite a bit legislatively and by executive order.
I have to wonder what Bernieâs concrete plans are, aside from a lot of appealing but Iâm afraid wishful thinking about free tuition, single payer health care for all, and taxing the 1% to pay for it all. For that to happen we would need a huge voter turnout that evicted the GOP from the Congress. And even then, there would always be blue dogs who wouldnât go along.
Thatâs why I thought HRCâs demonstrating some concrete plans and proposals was a winning strategy.
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Yeah, that was another thing I noticed too. And there are some pretty easy lines of political attack waiting for him there as well. Single-payer alone would literally restructure the economy by shifting a for-profit insurance industry to a non-profit government bureaucracy to administer healthcare. The lines of political attack the GOP could come up just on that would be brutal. Again, I agree with Bernie - I would love to see Medicare for all - but Bernie needs to explain how heâs going to implement it, and demonstrate NOW that he has his answers ready for the attacks that will inevitably come. He doesnât. Heâs appears to be avoiding those difficult discussions, and that wonât work.
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being the operative wordâŚ
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Iâll bet Ralph Nader is glad to be off the hook.
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Bernie Sanders is talking about liberal capitalism, or social democracy if one prefers, which has nothing to do with socialism. Itâs the idea that the force for change and solution of problems is the capitalist state. That it has a long historical record of failure is in a way beside the point. Itâs a way for mainstream capitalists to use its liberal wing to keep the masses in the fold - head off revolt if not socialist revolution - during periods of crisis or whenever else itâs necessary. To call Bernieâs socialism utopian would be giving it more than its due.
Thereâs a funny difference between Republicans and Democrats.
Republicans come right out and say they want the dumbest shit, a Christian, right-to-work country that kicks ass around the world, where guns are free but womenâs bodies arenât, where white people donât have to be afraid of blah blah blah . . . Yet somehow, they remain a major party, winning majorities in Congress and state legislatures.
But when someone from our side says something we all admit we agree with, we all get scared that we might get in âhot water.â
How do we ever change the narrative that way? Obama been has effective on many fronts, but killing the aura of Reagan is exactly what he hasnât done.
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To me, its a pretty simple, bumper stickerish line that needs to be used:
Its time for the American people to harness the power of capitalism, instead of capitalism harnessing the power of the American people.
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Good news: atheist is no longer at the bottom of the list. Although someone has to be; should be Republican.
The main point was amply demonstrated when the moron panelist of the week claimed told Maher he would be taxed at 80%, just before showing a clip of Trump telling a crowd that Sanders would tax them at 90%. It was not a crowd of hedge fund managers and talk show hosts.
Shouldnât we know better by now?
Democrats are less likely to pull a Nader, but the electorate as a whole is still pretty stupid, gullible, and lazy.
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