“He’s not moving a party to the left. He’s moving a generation to the left. Whether or not he’s winning or losing, it’s really that he’s impacting the way in which a generation—the largest generation in the history of America—thinks about politics.”
–John Della Volpe
Anyone who’s been following my comments and posts on Bernie Sanders knows I’ve been trying very hard not to get angry with the guy. As a Hillary Clinton supporter, this isn’t always easy. Supporting a cause or a candidate tends to lead all of us away from reason. Cognitive dissonance is blessing, but it’s nonetheless difficult to accept as the price of clear thinking.
My dad, who voted for Sanders, sent me the following article. It’s helping me get through these dog days of the Democratic Primary. Speaking at a high school awards ceremony this week, I told the graduates that they were heading into a stormy world, but I had faith in them. The world we are handing them is a basket case. Global warming alone will ensure that.
Like every generation, they will have their shortcomings and failures, but these kids will not fail in their concern for others. As a whole, they are kinder, more tolerant, and more caring. That was not true for my generation for whom conspicuous spending and enlightened selfishness were virtuous, and he who died with the most toys won. These kids like their toys, but greed is not a virtue.
As bad as their situation is, they are looking to government to start solving problems, and Bernie is representing them and their issues. It’s too soon to predict how they will change things, but they are already part of a sea change.
Polls show that both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have trouble appealing to young voters. In a recent study released by Harvard, millennial voters, aged 18-29, overwhelmingly favored Bernie Sanders. Sanders pulled a net favorable rating of 54 percent, Clinton only had 37 percent, and Trump pulled a miserable 17 percent of the same age group.
While the Harvard study shows that Sanders supporters will likely support Clinton if they have no other choice against Trump, the study also indicates that the Sanders campaign has made a lasting impression on young voters that will remain whether or not he wins the nomination. Polling director John Della Volpe explained that: “He’s not moving a party to the left. He’s moving a generation to the left. Whether or not he’s winning or losing, it’s really that he’s impacting the way in which a generation—the largest generation in the history of America—thinks about politics.”
Della Volpe’s work at the John F. Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics shows that over the course of the Sanders campaign young voters increasingly favored the campaign’s core issues. Tracking data over time, Della Volpe noted that there was a demonstrable shift towards progressive politics in the last year. In fact Max Ehrenfreund of The Washington Post suggests that regardless of what happens in the campaign “Sanders might have already won a contest that will prove crucially important in America’s political future.”
As The Atlantic reports, this young generation is liberal, leftist and even socialist in record numbers. Mother Jones reports that it is the largest generation in the country and equal in in voting numbers to the Baby Boomers for the first time ever.
The Sanders campaign has resonated with millennials for the simple reason that he has been the only candidate to take the issues facing our nation’s young seriously. He was the first candidate to put the issue of student debt on the map and he was the only candidate brave enough to state outright that the greatest security threat to the planet is climate change—not ISIS.
But, perhaps most importantly, his campaign recognizes the very real economic challenges facing young voters, who not only have more debt than any other young generation in U.S. history, but also face higher unemployment and more depressed wages than their elders.
(Maybe I’m being naive, but it would be nice if we could stick to the topics of millenials rather than another stupid thread about the primary).
What does their penchant for getting information from social media and peers rather than traditional news outlets mean for the future of America? Will they continue to be more vulnerable than previous generations to empty promises, ill-sourced information or demagoguery?
Will they stay more progressive and to-the-left as they grow up and into the responsibilities of adulthood?
Will they develop a respect for government and social institutions and working through them to make change? (About which institutions cynicism is increasingly seeming to me to be a luxury: you only complain about how the boat is run when it’s floating; after it sinks, you’re too busy swimming and trying to stay alive. Our institutions have been looking a little fragile this cycle, and I don’t think that’s a good development.)
It says that they know the corporate-owned media is a travesty and a tragedy for this country, and that they’re incredibly thirsty for information and will take it from wherever they can, but particularly people they know and trust.
Said from someone in the generation that saw to the end of our social welfare system, the Fairness Doctrine, and has for decades voted in people who cut government spending on schools and roads for tax cuts?
Puh-leaze.
All this finger wagging Baby Boomers do toward millenials without realizing that the Baby Boomers were the ones who took the most prosperous middle class in the history of middle classes… and destroyed it with reckless greed… is astounding.
Your generation turned America into one where one person could earn a salary that gave comfort to an entire family into an America where two people struggle to pay the bills….. *not* mine.
Enough of Baby Boomers blaming Millenials for problems that Baby Boomers caused.
I doubt bean personally favors much of what you ascribe to “her generation” assuming you know which generation that is (and I don’t).
But when baby boomers finger wag at an entire generation for struggling to grapple with the problems *their generation caused* I get both annoyed and astounded by their hypocrisy.
As far as I’m concerned, Millennials can’t come to power soon enough. Enough Boomers gutting the middle class and then getting angry at poor people for being poor. Enough endless tax cuts and then getting mad that our infrastructure is in a sorry state. Enough bombing, supporting illegal coups and invading other countries and then wondering why we have problems around the world.
Etcetera and ad infinitum.
I love many, many Boomers, but while a great many in their generation love to complain about Millennials like a broken record… Millennials haven’t caused the world’s problems… Boomers have.
Largely because of how nasty the dialog on this site has gotten. I remember BMG fondly from 2006, but it’s not the same place at all.
I’d say it was much more toxic in that primary, even if those candidates in retrospect would’ve governed fairly similarly. I’ve consistently said Bernie in the primary and Hillary in the general and I’m sticking to it. Unless you’re a pollster, in which case I’m a Johnson/Weld man.
I remember 2006 being a occasion where not being on the Deval Wagon got you endlessly insulted on a personal basis. It was plenty nasty if you didn’t buy into Deval (I should know). Whereas today, there are significant numbers of people on more than one side. I like that there’s more active discussion on this site now.
…I’ve been recently going back a few years to look at posts. If you open the search by month box on the right side and look at the post count, we have never returned to the level of activity we had when BMG was on Soapblox, even when you control for what was going on politically at the time.
Thanks to deregulation, the “traditional news outlets” in the are now owned by a cabal of six corporations. If anything, getting information though that propaganda machine it “ill sourced”.
So, confirmation bias, y’know.
“Moving a generation to the left’?
The BernieBro misogynists aren’t the “left” – sexism isn’t leftist.
Do I really need to waste time refuting the fact that any candidate has groups of followers they would like to disown?
The primary is over. Let’s get over it.
the upcoming primaries on Tuesday are just my imagination?! The primaries aren’t over until June 14th, the last time I checked.
Methuen’s appalling comment. And, really, Hillary supporters have this in the primary in the bad, so why they want to go out of their way to insult and denigrate Bernie Sanders supporters is beyond me.
If we lose the general election, it will be because of this kind of deplorable behavior — and lack of grace — among Hillary supporters during the waning days of the primary.
Your choice.
were you replying to me?
and so ryepower12’s comment ended up as a response to you.
Why did you downrate my comment, which was just stating a fact that the primaries aren’t over until June 14th?! My my, is this site getting nasty these days!
He probably hit the wrong button.
Not the best combo.
There certainly are primaries on Tuesday. Mark doesn’t deny that. The point, though, is that the way the delegate math works, Senator Sanders would have to amass impossibly large percentages of the vote to win the nomination. So the contest is over in a practical sense.
He has been pretty generous with the downrates on this thread.
The piece may or may not just be a big heap of confirmation bias. However, confirmation bias doesn’t infect everything everyone writes. To not even consider it’s content because you’re certain it has to reflect confirmation bias is a sign of — confirmation bias!
And to what extent does misogyny infect Sanders’ younger supporters? Do we have polling that supports that?
By which I mean, why are you, apparently, and so many other Clinton voters, in such distress?
Your candidate is WINNING, and has always been winning. Okay, Bernie is not exactly going gentle into that good night, but why do you struggle with “anger at the guy?” Politics ain’t beanbag.
Do you honestly believe the fate of the general election lies in his hands? It does not. “Trump won because Bernie did not concede in May,” Really?
Not to pick on Mark, who is thoughtful and the soul of courtesy. But there’s a lot of Sanders hate, worse, Sanders-supporter hate, from thin-skinned Clintonista’s right now.
I don’t care so much, except that a key challenge going forward is going to be helping millennial first-timers make the transition to long-haul campaigners and activists. How does this behavior further that goal?
Clinton, meanwhile, has pivoted to the general with all the clarity and professionalism we’ve come to expect of her.
Follow her lead.
…is that some on the Sanders side are acting like THEY won. They are the ones demanding concessions from the party. Some are suggesting (looking at you, jconway) that the winner needs to sound more like the one who came up short if she is going to have any hope of winning the general.
and confess I have not been following close enough to know exactly what you mean.
But offering concessions after you win is what leaders do, to assemble a durable governing coalition.
She’s gong to need that! And it is a sign of strength, not weakness.
From 1968 until maybe 1992, there was terrible internecine war in the Democratic Party — and it hurt both Humphrey and McGovern. Being a bad winner can be just as damaging as being a bad loser. With the stakes as high as they are, we cannot afford either.
I really wish the DNC would take Sanders supporters more seriously.
I’ve been the lone voice in the wilderness willing to critique the smug overconfidence of the Clinton camp and the denial of democratic reality on the Bernie camp. He lost the nomination fair and square, I’ve been saying that since at least the New York primary and recall calling Michigan a fleeting victory. He has lost this campaign, but he has won the long term battle for the soul of the party which we should welcome.
He has won because this is going to be his party going forward as activists transformed and transfixed by Sen. Sanders become party regulars. Hillary and anyone who supports her should view my generation, as Mark Bail as eloquently argued, as an opportunity not a threat. Leaders bring the party together and compromise with their foes, and I don’t recall President Obama showing your candidate the door and telling her to kiss his ring in 2008. I recall him welcoming her into his cabinet and relying on her counsel throughout his presidency. Hillary would be wise to do the same.
…for not following the absolutely insufferable example of the Progressive Democrats of America Facebook feed which posts daily on how Sanders can still win, which is another example I should have used in the previous comment. Hillary has been VERY magnanimous toward Sanders supporters in these waning weeks, but she also took the initiative to bring her supporters to Obama once the last states had voted. If I didn’t feel so strongly that Clinton had earned the presidency by her years of service I’d be with someone more obviously progressive. I just don’t want the party moving too far too fast to the hard left until she has her turn.
I think too many of Hillary’s supporters on the left share the incorrect assumption of her critics on the right that the surprising surge of support for Sanders should be viewed as a rejection of her qualifications, credentials, and fitness to be president. Why can’t his surprise success be viewed as a wider acceptance of the kind of views he espouses within the party? Why can’t his movement be viewed as a force that will help a President Clinton enact her agenda?
I think the sooner she and her campaign realize that, the sooner the primary can end and the party can unite. I’ve long argued that she could be another LBJ precisely since she is distrusted by progressives and has so much buy in from the centrist wing. It’s ultimately up to her how she wants to govern and the agenda she wants to pursue. She should view this closer than expected primary contest as an opportunity to seize, not a rebellion to crush.
What they say or think doesn’t matter. What do you want them to do, grovel?
Just ignore them when they bother you. There’s no winning in engaging angry, frustrated people who’ve lost a primary and want to lash out.
When you’re winning, show grace and ignore it.
We’re a party that supposedly believes in big tens and proportionality in primaries. If Bernie wins 40-45% of the pledged delegates, is it a terrible thing that that utterly meaningless platform reflects at least 40-45% of what Bernie Sanders supporters want?
Hillary needs to win the general election. Hillary Clinton supporters getting hot and bothered over the freaking platform is NOT helping.
So that last sentence? I meant angry and annoyed. I am like that robot or alien in cheesy SF films who always gets expressions just a *little* off.
Preemptive mea cupla.
..and we demand concessions, and you refuse concessions?
That’s not how politics works, that’s not how any of this works.
I don’t think you’re responding here to anything Mark has actually written.
but I’ll extend your subscription to my comments for a year for free.
(And I thought that Mark was talking about millennials, but I don’t want to argue about it.)
Where did your second paragraph come from? As far as I can tell, Mark has never expressed anger at Sanders.
it was precisely Mark’s confession that he has “been trying very hard not to get angry” with Sanders that prompted my reply.
I mean, I thought that was remarkable, as in worth a remark.
So it seems like you want to indict him for some kind of thought crime.
Whatever I said that bugs you, I apologize for it.
I don’t think I owe Mark any sort of apology (and he hasn’t asked for one), and for that matter see the start of my 4th paragraph.
I don’t mean that my anger means Bernie is wrong. My feelings justify exactly nothing. My anger has more to do with my Clinton partisanship, and the fact that I’m so freakin’ tired of having to play this same freakin’ morality play out over and over again. Because my anger isn’t rational, I fight it.
How stupid is it that MethuenProgressive criticizes my post because s/he assumes that I must be a Bernie supporter? Or that Betsey doesn’t know the players without a scorecard?
We already know what everyone is going to say, and still we say it. The Bernie supporters will criticize the Hillary supporters and vice versa. Christopher’s going to post something and James will criticize him. Ryan wills say something strident. JTM has moderated in the last week or two, but he was completely predictable. Betsey will uprate him and downrate everyone who disagrees with him. JimC will make a post he claims isn’t meant to set anything off and it will.
to do with this stupid primary.
The primary is over in Massachusetts. Mathematically, it’s over nationally. We can start trying to heal and continue with the absolute bullshit. We can certainly try to stick to the freakin’ topic.
The escalation of hope. Democrats seem to win national campaigns be appealing to hopes and dreams in a stirring manner. Deval Patrick, Barack Obama, and Bernie Sanders all do this really well. Trouble is that change through government is such a slow creaky thing that even something like that ACA, which was a significant accomplishment, seems small compared to the previously inspired hopes. It’s as if this approach works only every other election in a never ending cycle of Hope, Disappointment, Loss, and then more Hope followed by more Disappointment and Loss.
Voters and Self-Interest. I’ve seen some social science that shows voters are disinclined to vote based on self-interest. Anger, altruism, values, etc. are stronger motivators, oddly. So I’m a bit concerned about the Clinton campaign imagining that championing policies benefiting millennials will suffice for winning their support. You’d think people would vote based on “what’s in it for me” but that does not happen so much.
Sanders as Millennial. In the linked article, McClennen points out a number of ways the response to the Sanders campaign has mirrored how millennials get treated. That does suggest even more care will be required from the Clinton campaign.
Do I really need to waste time refuting the fact that any candidate has groups of followers they would like to disown?
The primary is over. Let’s get over it.
for Methuen.
a conservative, defense attorney when Freddie Gray was murdered in Baltimore. I wanted and found someone who knew criminal law, but he’s nuts about the kids at colleges and their protests. I don’t think they are much different than the people in the 1960s. Their causes are different, and there was more urgency back then, but they were also dismissed. It’s time to start listening and reaching out to them.
Who are they? 18-25s?
Can we really generalize about who they are and what they want?
Do we know the exact numbers, or is it projection from tiny exit poll samples?
just a meme that they all voted for Bernie and they all hate Clinton?
How many voted voted for Trump?
How many didn’t vote at all?
bold-face in my post are called hyperlinks. They are a great way to find answers to questions.
The link to the Harvard study in your source did not work for me. With a minor amount of sleuthing, I was able to correct it. It is located here.
Almost by definition, I think it remains to be seen whether younger people (18-29 years old) turn out to vote in the general election. I expect that many of them will, though in lower numbers than older people, which has been the trend since the beginning of modern polling.
In terms of numbers, though, there’s no denying: younger voters far prefer Sanders to Clinton everywhere across the entire country. (I say this as someone who is fine with Sanders but prefers Clinton). I would provide links, but mark-bail has already done so and literally every exit poll indicates a massive generational difference on Bernie vs. Clinton support.
But that does not mean that they would support Trump, of course. In fact, “Trump’s Support Among Young Voters Historically Low,” as a CNN headline put it, referencing the Harvard study in mark-bail’s post.
Hillary will need to woo Sanders supporters, which she will do successfully. In the meantime, it’s fair to say that Sanders has done a service to the liberal movement by helping nudge the youngest generation further to the political left.
To enact anything close to a progressive agenda is going to require retaking the House and winning a very large majority in the Senate. Winning the House in turn is going to require winning a lot of state legislatures, and those state legislatures now are very, very Republican.
So we have a lot of voters we need to amass into our column. Converting conservatives to liberalism happens rarely. With the systemic closure of news sources tied to social media, it’s gotten harder not easier. So what does that leave?
It leaves finding people who would vote Democratic if they did vote and convincing them it’s worth their while to vote. This does not mean complaining about millennials as if they were spoiled layabouts who don’t know what’s good for them. Polling does indicate that a substantial percentage of millennials are more liberal than other age groups. In fact, there’s even a College Republican site that whines that, if only young people voted like other age groups, we’d have a President Romney. (They have a cute graphic and you can see Florida, Ohio, and Virginia going red if millennials were only as liberal as older folk.)
So there’s already evidence that they’re a significant group.
And yes, polling also shows that they don’t vote so much, that they’re too busy to vote, and that they’re not always convinced it makes a difference.
But that’s an opportunity, not an objection.
does seem, at least based upon polling data and my own interactions with my students, to be particularly engaged and both more liberal and perhaps surprisingly more practical (in the sense of, “we are idealists but we really want to get things done”). They appear particularly willing to look to government to help solve problems.
The question, though, is whether this generation can overcome the general cynicism of government that makes possible the converting of ideals into policy. Distrust of government is at all-time highs, and while largely due to conservative attacks on government, is also a consequence of liberals constantly berating the government as insufferably corrupt, undemocratic, and incompetent.
If government is as horrible as both Left and Right seem to agree, why would we allow it to take on key roles in health care, education, student debt, etc.? This is perhaps the crucial dilemma that contemporary liberals (and the youngest generation) need to figure out if they expect any victories beyond those libertarian ones that seek government restraint (such as preventing government from enforcing anti-gay rights initiatives).
more liberal and practical. When I started teaching high school in East Longmeadow in 1992, my students were much more conservative. If I brought up the City of Springfield, they would often have disparaging things to say. On Friday, we were talking about Marxism (Orwell’s 1984), and I was hard-pressed to find any resentment when I suggested we should bus kids in from Springfield. East Longmeadow is a suburb, and as such, it is, overall, center-right in general. But these kids are not. They aren’t religious either. And Bernie fans outnumber Trump fans by a large degree.
This year, we transitioned to graduation gowns of a uniform color (red for both boys and girls) to address transgender issues. I spent an entire 90-minute class periods last year letting the kids discuss this. The most influential kid was a nice, average kid, not political as far as I know. He wasn’t even in my class, but he had said on Twitter, “If wearing the same color gown means that someone will now have a good experience at graduation, I’m fine with it. I’m going to be happy no matter what.” He had no problem making a change for what is, a very small minority of transgender kids. I went up and told him what a good job he had done. I had kids quoting him in class.
That is, I wish I I saw evidence that any of the energy that Bernie mobilized was turning into sustained activity towards long term change, rather than degenerating into paranoid, self-destructive conspiracies. Maybe I should wait a week and reassess.
Bernie subgroup, as large as it may be. We have Bernie supporters here who will vote for Hillary. Most will. Some won’t.
It’s not that I’m not nervous about Tuesday or the election, but I”m optimistic about the electorate in the long-term. If I were elected President, I’d start a major infrastructure push and get people working. Let the Tea Party choke on that.
taking Secretary Clinton at her word. She recognizes her poor showing with independents and young voters. She says she will try to gain their backing as the President elect.
In the meantime she is short on several issues those under 40 want. Diane Feinstein, a major surrogate, went so far as to call Single Payer “socialized medicine” in a most derogatory way e.g.. This is not comforting language to these young voters.
It is not so much Clinton’s character, but her stands on issues that have put off the young. Clinton supporters like Madeline Albright and Gloria Steinham didn’t help.
Having met many of these under 40 voters I am impressed how knowledgeable they are. They know specifically what they are asking of their government and why.
At the State Convention Elizabeth Warren gave a devastating account of the rise of inequality from the 70s. The millennials want to succeed, not fall behind. They want this income stagnation reversed as it should be.
Young adults represent the future of this country. They just do not buy into what Ms. Clinton was offering. They want more dramatic changes. Now you can tell them that incrementalism and moderation is preferred by the majority, but they will not be convinced.
I sense this movement will not end with this election, but they will organize for what they think is right for this country. There is too much dead wood in the Democratic Party. Here in Massachusetts State Committee Members have been there 20 years or more. New blood is needed.
As a sign of things to come, the delegates at the State Convention voted to put Single Payer in the Platform, and urged its delegates to bring it nationally. They also voted overwhelmingly for a thorough review of the role of Super Delegates. Even Elizabeth Warren criticized how they have functioned this election, and remains an uncommitted Super Delegate.
So something is in the air, but like all forward looking movements, it takes longer than it should.
…anybody who has been on the DSC for 20 years automatically moves to lifetime status, precisely so new people can come in. I got my own seat by running for a vacancy that opened up when the incumbent hit 20 years. Of course, you have the opportunity to run every four years as well.
But the resolutions voted on at the convention were not “overwhelming” votes expressive of the will of the party; they were majorities of the group that remained until the end for those votes – self-selected, possibly not a quorum (but thank goodness no one called for a count), certainly less than half of the delegates who began the day in Lowell.
Sure, Bernie Sanders will not make it to the White House, but that does not mean it’s over. Should she make to the White House, Hillary Clinton will still have to face the reality that many independents, younger voters, (and older Democrats like me) will continue push for what we believe in.
I for one will not give up on making health care a right, putting more cops on Wall Street, raising wages – starting at the bottom, raising taxes on the rich, and somehow, getting Citizens United overturned.
The Democrats who disagree with on the aforementioned are indeed “dead wood” as oetkb describes. If anything, it’s over for them, soon. Call this their last hurrah, if it helps.
I suspect many BMG participants join me in enthusiastically agreeing with this perspective — I’ve been saying it here since the first Democratic debate.
Bernie Sanders has played a hugely important pivotal role in keeping the important issues in focus. He has moved the ELECTORATE to the left, and Ms. Clinton with it. The movement he energized is crucial to the long-term health and success of our party and our nation.
In my view, Hillary Clinton has been supportive of and responsive to this movement all along, and I expect her to be more so as she turns her attention to winning the general election and then to governing this troubled nation.
I hope you will join Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in enthusiastically working to elect Hillary Clinton in November — so that we can collectively make substantive progress on the crucial issues you enumerate.
No more sticks…..switching to carrots….on both sides. That’s a good thing and it’s how we win in November and beyond.
she is a follower not a leader. Hopefully she will look at the staggering wrong direction numbers and understand a little change will not be enough.
You want her to come more in line with Sanders positions, but then call her a mere follower when she does. I’m sorry she’s not leading in quite the direction you would like, but she DID win the primary as is.
Successful candidates for president follow shifts in the electorate, they do not lead them.
All his writings against slavery would’ve been used in attack ads to undermine his more “moderate” views merely opposing his expansion. You think Hillary and Goldman is bad, he took money from the slaveholding Blair family and gave them prominent cabinet positions with patronage.
How else can one explain the numerous and ongoing policy shifts in her career? I’m not going to complain about it now. Nothing I can do about it except to try to take advantage of it.
…and will likely sign what you want if it hits her desk (yes, including single-payer), so work on the Congress though that probably means reaching beyond MA borders since our own delegation is among the best:)
She does not now support health care as a right. She did once and there is no reason to doubt that she can again. In her last vote on the subject, she sided with Wall Street. However, once again even as Senator Warren has learned, Clinton can be spun. It all depends on the efforts of the spinners. That’s where I intend to be busy. As for reversing Citizens United, once again, she sings one tune but her super pacs sing another. No worries, we’ll just have to spin her.
To take a line from Senator Markey over the weekend, if she is elected to the White House We Have More Work To Do!
I couldn’t use the volume, but guessing it was that one. please stop repeating these, it doesn’t help.
Really? Please stop spreading that, it does not help.
It was clearly debunked, go to politifact or something, comments were old not based on what Clinton did as a Senator, it was more incomplete and misleading to use that specific video. But you knew that and you don’t care. Stop already with this useless crap. It’s dumb and completely useless.
Really?
TO THE OTHER POST.
SERIOUSLY, IT’S PATHETIC.
If we all shut up, I’ll bet that would solve everything.
Or I guess I could write another stupid post that draws pathetic comments.
annoying. This freakin’ thing is over, and it’s time to move on.
It’s time to stop criticizing the candidates for a while: Bernie and Hillary. You wrote a post criticizing Hillary. I actually didn’t agree with it, but it wasn’t possible to discuss it because the whole thing would/did degenerate into partisan stupidity. There is an issue to be discussed, but the chances of a rational discussion: zero.
Personally I don’t know what Bernie’s up to, but I’m hoping for the best on his part. My anger doesn’t mean he’s wrong. It means I’m irritated. I’m trying to keep my feelings and thoughts separate because my feelings are not helpful.
That’s easy to answer. The Democrats have swung way too far to the right on many issues. Bernie and his supporters are simply using the primary process and politics in general to reverse that course. We want a more progressive party, one that is not dependent on super pacs, one that is willing to put more cops on Wall Street, one that is willing to raise taxes on the rich, provide health care as a right, and raise wages starting at the bottom.
That’s what he’s up to. That’s what I’m up to. There is no reason to fear us unless you are a hedge fund manager, health insurance CEO, or large donor to super pacs or, perhaps, a very wealthy person who is afraid to pay a fair share in taxes.
I agree with all of those goals.
I just don’t understand his strategy at this point. He was saying the convention is going to be “contested.” That scares me, but as I say, he may be playing out a strategy I’m not aware of at this point. And I give a lot of weight to the end when I consider the means. From the outside, his strategy hasn’t seemed very clear.
Because the super’s votes are not official, I guess. I can only assume that Sanders believes he still has a little leverage left and if he concedes any earlier than he has to, he has given ground that he did not have to, ground that she can adopt if forced to.
It may pinch a little, but life’s tough. In the long-run, if the party is reoriented, and we win the presidency (or more), all is good.
To be honest, I can’t figure that out. By my lights he should be out boosting House and Senate progressives, trashing McTrumpface a la Elizabeth Warren, and otherwise seeking to make the Bernie movement a key part of Clinton victory.
But (a) plenty of time for that still and (b) what do i know? So, I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Note to Mark Bail upthread, where he says “this freaking thing is over.”
That depends on what the meaning if “this freaking thing” is. The disposition of the party, the array of forces come January, is most certainly not over.
The nomination? That’s been over for ages, but Bernie was never going to get that.
I have some great ideas for continuing the bickering for the rest of the summer!
About Clean for Gene McCarthy. His popularity among the young, many unable to vote at the time, was a harbinger of political change. Even after Nixon was elected, the thought was that there would be a politically transformative figure as the McCarthy supporters became 21, and became involved.
Of course, that did happen – with Ronald Reagan
my friend.
Now the GOP is a national joke that is nominating an overtly racist narcissist who draws his ideas from Alex Jones. And for every Charlie Baker, there is a Sam Brownback and Rick Snyder. Wake Reagan with they knocking! I would thou couldst!