Bernie Sanders Discussion Thread
POSTED BY: reaverfan
UPDATED: Monday, July 27, 2026 16:39
VIEWED: 44545
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With many Americans voting for Bernie Sanders, we've been treated to millions of words worth of takes about the strands of populist discontent that fuel anti-establishment politics. Still, the fact remains that most people are NOT voting in the primaries. And most of the Democrats who are voting are voting for Hillary Clinton.
How to explain this paradoxical result whereby mass discontent with the economy will lead to a reaffirmation of establishment control?
John Sides offers one provocative theory — maybe most people aren't really upset. There is evidence that voters aren't angry about the economy after all. To see that evidence:
www.vox.com/2016/5/2/11548948/consumer-sentiment-historical
The overall political system actually seems to be trending toward a complacent outcome. That is why Bernie should be preparing for the 2020 election. He'd have to if he won now. Just because he might lose in 2016 does not mean he and all his followers should not prepare this year for 2020. Sadly for America, I expect Bernie lovers will surrender to despair and prepare not at all because they don't have the staying power of those nasty old Republicans who can impatiently tolerate Democrats in control. Bernie lovers can't even tolerate anybody but Bernie as President.
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SECOND
YOU and KIKI between the two of you, and I myself, have provide examples of how important Presidential policies were thwarted. Carter's plans for the Iranian hostage release were thwarted by Reagan, who was at the time only a Presidential candidate.
LBJ's plans for a Vietnam cease-fire were thwarted by Nixon, who himself was only a Presidential candidate.
How much more powerful would it be, then, to be able to redirect Presidential plans from the inside? For example, people who left the GWB admin describe more than one Cabinet-level meeting when GWB would listen to his different advisors glassy-eyed, and then go off into a room with Cheney, only to emerge a few minutes later as "the decider".
The USA administration is not a single entity. The CIA in particular tends to fund its own covert ops through illicit means (drug trafficking, weapons sales) but it needs a sympathetic figure in the military- like Oliver North (NSC staff, and Marine Lt Col), who reported to William Casey (CIA) who conveniently died of a brain tumor before he was to testify on any knowledge of the Iran-Contra connection.
So, there are obviously people who conduct foreign policy at odds with what the President thinks. They can be competitors, such as Presidential candidates, or they can even be high-level appointees.
What's to say that Hillary was not conducting her own foreign (neocon) policy? The State Department, with its close ties to CIA, would be a perfect fit.
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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.
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Quote:Let's just assume that Bush was not all there in his head. He gave plenty of indication as Texas governor that he was lazy, incurious, and indifferent to his duties. Also assume a President who doesn't have Alzheimer's, someone who is not another Reagan.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND
YOU and KIKI between the two of you, and I myself, have provide examples of how important Presidential policies were thwarted. Carter's plans for the Iranian hostage release were thwarted by Reagan, who was at the time only a Presidential candidate.
LBJ's plans for a Vietnam cease-fire were thwarted by Nixon, who himself was only a Presidential candidate.
How much more powerful would it be, then, to be able to redirect Presidential plans from the inside? For example, people who left the GWB admin describe more than one Cabinet-level meeting when GWB would listen to his different advisors glassy-eyed, and then go off into a room with Cheney, only to emerge a few minutes later as "the decider".
Outside the Federal government’s executive branch, the President is not powerful. Repeat that to yourself a dozen times: not powerful, not powerful, not. . .
Yes, the President can kill people, but no, he can’t kill most people that won’t do what he wants. He needs a justification to kill. That is why LBJ did not shoot Nixon, the candidate, even though Nixon was a traitor. LBJ would have had to justify shooting him and that justification would include that LBJ was spying on Nixon. LBJ (1908–1973) died at 64. Maybe he was too tired to end scumbag Nixon in 1968.
On the other hand, the President is very powerful inside the executive branch. Repeat the word "inside" a dozen times. The President can spy on his millions of employees. He can fire employees. He can transfer disobedient employees to the Aleutian Islands to count penguins. A President who can’t control the CIA or FBI or Pentagon is a lazy foolish President that is not trying. A President that can’t control Congress or the Supreme Court or Iran or Canada or France or Russia or Somali pirates is a normal energetic President with very narrow and limited power over people who do not work for and are not paid by his executive branch.
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"The President can spy on his millions of employees."
Yes, he can stay up - night after night - spying on his millions of employees. Because god forbid he delegate anything. He must thwart those secretive no-good doers by doing everything himself.
I can see second, that you're unwilling or unable to address the topics that I'm concerned about and reluctant to address the facts I post, preferring instead to respond to things I didn't post, and to derail onto pointless quibbles.
So, in the interests of perhaps elucidating what you think, I'm going to limit my posts to single questions with yes/ no answers. Hopefully, we'll be able to proceed with an actual, if strictly formatted, exchange of ideas.
Ready?
This statement comes from Hillary's website. Yes or no?
https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/national-security/?webSyncID=749
d5162-1dd1-9d79-9925-cb2049b7b464&sessionGUID=507d26b9-812a-7dc2-94b7-40882982b014
Standing up to Putin. Hillary has gone toe-to-toe with Putin before, and she'll do it again. She'll stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our European allies and help them decrease dependence on Russian oil. With our partners, Hillary will confine, contain, and deter Russian aggressions in Europe and beyond, and increase the costs to Putin for his actions.
SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.
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Quote:This may be called a Bernie Sanders Discussion Thread, but I don't care anymore than a Republican would. You Bernie lovers should continuously be reminded that the World is not as it should be, but you can't change it by being nice. You must be mean, cruel, violent. Being fair and reasonable will get you nothing, except with your family and friends. Here is What a Republican Attack on Bernie Sanders Would Look Like
Originally posted by 1kiki:
I can see second, that you're unwilling or unable to address the topics that I'm concerned about and reluctant to address the facts I post, preferring instead to respond to things I didn't post, and to derail onto pointless quibbles.
www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/05/bernie_sande
rs_electability_argument_is_still_a_myth.html
Sanders’ “superior electability” is still a myth. . . . there’s been only scattered excavation of Sanders’ radical connections. He has never been asked to account for his relationship with the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party, for which he served as a presidential elector in 1980. At the time, the party’s platform called for abolishing the U.S. military budget and proclaimed “solidarity” with revolutionary Iran. (This was in the middle of the Iranian hostage crisis.) There’s been little cable news chatter about Sanders’ 1985 trip to Nicaragua, where he reportedly joined a Sandinista rally with a crowd chanting, “Here, there, everywhere/ The Yankee will die.” It would be nice if this were due to a national consensus on the criminal nature of America’s support for the Contras. More likely, the media’s attention has simply been elsewhere.
The Clinton campaign has also ignored Sanders’ youthful sex writings. Republicans are unlikely to be so decorous. Imagine an ad drawing from the old Sanders essay “The Revolution Is Life Versus Death.” First it might quote the candidate mocking taboos on child nudity: “Now, if children go around naked, they are liable to see each others [sic] sexual organs, and maybe even touch them. Terrible thing!” Then it would quote him celebrating girls who defy their mothers and have sex with their boyfriends: “The revolution comes … when a girl pushes aside all that her mother has ‘taught’ her and accepts her boyfriends [sic] love.” Finally, it would remind viewers that Sanders was one of 14 congressmen to vote against the law establishing the Amber Alert system and one of 15 to vote against an amendment criminalizing computer-generated child pornography. The fact that these votes were cast for entirely principled civil libertarian reasons is, in the context of a general-election attack, beside the point. (It’s also beside the point that lots of people, myself included, have no problem with either child nudity or teenage sex.) It takes no special political insight to see that Republicans will try to make Sanders seem like a sexual weirdo. Will it work? I have no idea, but there’s no shorter route to the frightened lizard brain of the American electorate than dark talk about children and sex.
One could go on and on in this vein. My colleague William Saletan has already written about how support for Sanders’ positions tends to fall apart when people hear the details—particularly if they learn their own taxes would go up. As the nominee, Sanders would have to address his former opposition to public schools and praise for parents who believe that it is “better for their children not to go to school at all than for them to attend a normal type of establishment.” He’d have to explain whether he still feels that sexual repression causes cancer, whether he still opposes the concept of private charity, and whether he still supports the public takeover of the television industry.
One also assumes Republicans would, in keeping with Karl Rove’s playbook, try to hit Sanders where he’s strongest—on issues of financial integrity. They’d probably do it by going after Jane Sanders, who has been accused of trying to defraud the Catholic Church on a land deal she undert
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"You Bernie lovers"
Tsk tsk. And after I spent two very long posts explaining at length that my focus has shifted away from Bernie and TO HILLARY, and that my position has shifted away from 'I prefer Bernie' to 'ANYBODY BUT HILLARY', and why I now think 'ANYBODY BUT HILLARY'. So, I see you've extended your strawman streak. At this point I don't think it's an accident, it's a deliberate tactic at derailing honest discussion. ie You're being deliberately dishonest in a concerted, repeated way.
Hence I'm not going to either read the rest of your post or respond to it.
SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.
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So, in the interests of perhaps elucidating what you think, I'm going to limit my posts to single questions with yes/ no answers. With any luck this will focus your replies on WHAT I ACTUALLY POST. And hopefully, we'll be able to proceed with an actual, if strictly formatted, exchange of ideas. Second chance:
Ready?
This statement comes from Hillary's website. Yes or no?
https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/national-security/?webSyncID=749
d5162-1dd1-9d79-9925-cb2049b7b464&sessionGUID=507d26b9-812a-7dc2-94b7-40882982b014
Standing up to Putin. Hillary has gone toe-to-toe with Putin before, and she'll do it again. She'll stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our European allies and help them decrease dependence on Russian oil. With our partners, Hillary will confine, contain, and deter Russian aggressions in Europe and beyond, and increase the costs to Putin for his actions.
SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.
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Just watched Bernie Sanders’s speech at a rally in Louisville. It was one of the best speeches I’ve ever seen a politician give.
by Beverly Mann May 3, 2016 9:39 pm
http://angrybearblog.com/2016/05/just-watched-bernie-sanderss-speech-a
t-a-rally-in-louisville-it-was-one-of-the-best-speeches-ive-ever-seen-a-politician-give.html
Sanders was at the very top of his game tonight in Louisville. A genuinely beautiful speech, delivered in perfectly modulated tone, with a wonderful, mostly young group standing on the stage very close behind him and to his sides, and a crowd that several times broke into chants of “Bernie! Bernie!”. I felt like I was there. I hope he uses clips of it in internet ads as he campaigns in California and the other remaining states.
This is the first primary night speech I’ve watched more than just a few minutes of. I haven’t watched most of the election night speeches at all, and have seen only short clips of a few rally speeches. But I clicked on the Washington Post website to see the early Indiana returns, and when I saw that Sanders was beginning a speech in Louisville that the Post was showing live, I clicked it. Watching it was really an experience. I’m guessing that his convention speech will be a version of tonight’s speech, modified somewhat as necessary—a tremendous spur for the Democratic Party from the top of the ticket on down.
It is a mistake to misread the role Bernie Sanders will play in what will be a tremendous victory for progressives—a true turning point. He talked tonight about some legislation he’s currently presenting in the Senate, and I’m sure there will be more legislation and a larger focus on it as the convention approaches. This is what I’ve been hoping he’d do. He probably won’t be the presidential nominee, but he’s making it clear that progressive governance will be a team effort among progressive Democratic elected officials. And Hillary Clinton seems to be indicating now that she wants to be a part of that, not a hindrance to it. Good for her.
Although most of those on the stage with him tonight were young, photos I saw of his rally last night in downtown Indianapolis, with about 8,000 in attendance, showed a largely middle-aged crowd. Tonight Sanders is winning Marion County, where Indianapolis is, and most of the suburban Indianapolis counties, and the county where Fort Wayne is. At this writing, with 76% of the vote counted, he’s ahead in Indiana by more than 6%.
Clinton will win the nomination and the general election, but Sanders will be the Most Valuable Player, in November and beyond. The Democrats are uniting around progressivism.
And both uniting and progressivism are operative words here.
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Quote:It was plainly obvious to me, living in Texas between two Republican neighbors who have decided to hate each other and say to me that they want to kill the other over the trivial matter of whether a driving school should continue to use the street in front of their houses, that Republicans would see a black as an illegitimate president. Millions of Republicans are still fighting the Civil War, inside their imagination, and Obama is obviously a slave and should be stopped because he is the opposite of everything the Confederate States once stood for. There is a whole series of quotes that reveal how Republicans think at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/william_f_buckley_jr.html
Originally posted by G:
So what you're saying is that the Republicans will unite against progressivism. Sorry, I don't see that much will change from now (obstructionism) no matter who the dems have in the WH. People were excited by how much the also brilliant speech maker Obama was going to do when he got in twice, and some things got done, but sadly, one of those was how he was instrumental in solidifying and making more robust the opposition.
Quote:People who think like Republicans will always be causing problems for everyone else, but especially for any Democratic President who is a Jew or a woman or not their race or . . . whatever is bothering the Republican.
A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'
I would like to electrocute everyone who uses the word 'fair' in connection with income tax policies.
Liberals, it has been said, are generous with other peoples' money, except when it comes to questions of national survival when they prefer to be generous with other people's freedom and security.
Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich.
Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.
And that example of Republicans on the street where I live hating the driving school using the street? The Driving School is still using the street because the Republicans can't convince the Baytown police to keep the student drivers off a public street. The Baytown police must be taking bribes according to the Republicans. And many of the student drivers are Mexican, which is an outrage, at least according to the Republicans.
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:It was plainly obvious to me, living in Texas between two Republican neighbors who have decided to hate each other and say to me that they want to kill the other over the trivial matter of whether a driving school should continue to use the street in front of their houses, that Republicans would see a black as an illegitimate president. Millions of Republicans are still fighting the Civil War, inside their imagination, and Obama is obviously a slave and should be stopped because he is the opposite of everything the Confederate States once stood for. There is a whole series of quotes that reveal how Republicans think at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/william_f_buckley_jr.html
Originally posted by G:
So what you're saying is that the Republicans will unite against progressivism. Sorry, I don't see that much will change from now (obstructionism) no matter who the dems have in the WH. People were excited by how much the also brilliant speech maker Obama was going to do when he got in twice, and some things got done, but sadly, one of those was how he was instrumental in solidifying and making more robust the opposition.Quote:People who think like Republicans will always be causing problems for everyone else, but especially for any Democratic President who is a Jew or a woman or not their race or . . . whatever is bothering the Republican.
A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'
I would like to electrocute everyone who uses the word 'fair' in connection with income tax policies.
Liberals, it has been said, are generous with other peoples' money, except when it comes to questions of national survival when they prefer to be generous with other people's freedom and security.
Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich.
Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.
And that example of Republicans on the street where I live hating the driving school using the street? The Driving School is still using the street because the Republicans can't convince the Baytown police to keep the student drivers off a public street. The Baytown police must be taking bribes according to the Republicans. And many of the student drivers are Mexican, which is an outrage, at least according to the Republicans.
Your attempts to infuse the views of your neighbors into generalizations of all Republicans, which you clearly do not comprehend, seems quite lame.
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