If Bernie Sanders runs for president as a Democrat, he could have a similarly energizing effect for the left that another Vermonter had in 2003 and 2004. Of course, Howard Dean was a moderate Democrat and a WASP, not a 75 year-old socialist Jew with a Brooklyn accent. If the election of Barack Obama made a quarter of this country lose their damn minds, I imagine that nearly half would have a heart attack and bury their valuables if Bernie Sanders became our leader.
But that doesn’t really matter, because Sanders would never win the nomination, let alone the presidency. And I don’t think winning would really be the point of his campaign anyway, which can be liberating but also limits how much effort people are willing to put into the project. I know that I wouldn’t drop anything to help Sanders’ campaign, but I’d vote for him in a second.
Ideally, someone a little younger, whose personal biography doesn’t give half the country the urge to burn a cross and check their fluoridation levels, would emerge to offer a more viable alternative to Hillary Clinton. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio could be that guy. Maybe Sen. Tom Udall could take on that role.
A stronger challenge to Clinton would probably be helpful to her because two strong campaigns can register more voters than one. And because working for the nomination helps a candidate work out the kinks, make bad news “old news,” and hone their debating skills.
I read that Bernie Sanders visited Alabama not too long ago. I’d enjoy seeing a lot more of that. I think he’s a very persuasive person. But I don’t think a whole lot will come of this talk of him running for president, whether as a Democrat or as an independent.
The Democrats have many fine choices.
ALL of whom I will help with GOTV and manning phone-banks.
My two favorites would be Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown – with either one at the head of the ticket.
And while I love Bernie, and I encourage him to enter the primaries, I hope that he won’t go 3rd Party like that schmuck Nader (you could live to be a thousand, Ralph, and you’ll never live down having a hand in getting that sociopathic moron, W, into the Oval Office).
And I don’t think he would.
He’s far smarter, politically, than Ralph Nader.
If Brown and/or Warren and others run, it will be to see who gets to be in second position on the ticket. Can’t imagine Biden wanting to do the One Observatory Circle jerk for another eight years.
Warren’s almost as old as Hillary. She couldn’t wait eight more years. I think she would be perfectly fine being remembered as the sort of Senator Ted Kennedy was.
It would be a crime to take either Brown or Warren out of the Senate. They’re far more valuable there than they could ever be as Vice President.
I don’t blame Nader. I blame Gore for failing to adequately address Nader’s issues. Later, he did, but not when it counted.
I heard Bernie discuss his run on the Thom Hartmann show. He will not go third party and will support the eventual nominee whom he is sure would be better than any Republican. He does not expect to win but to give the nation a choice. He explicitly said that he does not want to be remembered for throwing the election to a Republican. In my personal opinion Bernie is old and wants a Last Hurrah, so that the history books will mention him. Or else he always wanted to run and when you get old enough, what the Hell? I’m only a few years younger and I can understand all three motives.
I will donate my vote and my money to Bernie and probably vote for Hillary in the Fall. I’ve said elsewhere that she must retract the trade agreements and try to bring the USA industrial base back. I would prefer Brown or Warren, but Warren doesn’t have the fire in my opinion. And neither did Gore. Bill Clinton had the fire. He was a veritable volcano of fire in the belly. He would have crawled over broken glass for the Presidency. He would have EATEN broken glass for the Presidency. That’s what it takes.
I felt at the time, and now, that with Nader, no matter if Gore had energetically embraced several more of Ralph’s issues, that the response would have been “That’s good to see, but what about … ” Always One More Thing with Nader.
I don’t think he would have ever been satisfied with Gore because the point wasn’t so much about ideology as about punishing Gore for the previous 8 yrs. Probably over something personal early on, like failing to nominate Ralph for a major cabinet post, or to the Sup Ct.
Nader, iirc, had some weird personal issues with Carter too, despite Jimmy bringing into his admin several “Nader’s Raiders” as they were called then. Carter and his top Nader appointee, Jill Clayburgh, wanted to work with Ralph on some important consumer bill, but Ralph stubbornly stayed on the sidelines. Something like that anyway.
As for Gore not having the fire, perhaps during the Long Recount, but he did in fact have it in the general. It was however unfortunate that he lacked Bill’s political know-how.
And Warren: she may lack the fire to run in 2016, true. But she’s also not going to run because she doesn’t have the interest, with Hillary, who she has essentially already endorsed, getting ready in the locker room. I don’t expect this situation to change.
Sherrod Brown is the only candidate I can get excited about. All the rest strike me as mediocre candidates, someone to settle for after Obama.
As I’ve said before, I would crawl over broken glass to vote for Sherrod Brown, and he would get my time and my money, too.
In my heart of hearts, I support Brown too. But unlike 2008, when there was a path past the supposed invincibility of the Hillary juggernaut, this time I don’t see it. Then, I wasn’t convinced Hillary was inevitable. I supported Edwards until it became clear to even me that I was a moron, and then I jumped on the Obama train (where I remain to this day).
However, now I am convinced of Hillary’s inevitability. By being the good soldier these last eight years, she’s bought herself a ton of good will — from donors but more importantly from a huge swath of the Democratic faithful. I don’t think she can be put in the bad-faith box she wasn’t able fight her way out of last time. The vote for war put her there. Being a good soldier freed her.
Hillary/Brown 2016.
Get Brown set up for 2024.
Get real progressives elected on coattails in 2016.
I’ll tell you something. Sherrod Brown is my Senator, and I have had the privilege to be at many of his events over the years, both large and very small. And there is no one who could connect better with average voters and what some called, in years past, Reagan Democrats. When you are face to face with this guy, and he is looking you in the eye, you have no doubt that he absolutely has everything you need to win those over those kinds of voters.
I would LOVE for him to take the plunge, but I just don’t think he has an interest.
This is almost the funniest thing I have ever read.
Wow. Trying to put lipstick on a pig? They must be desperate if Rick Perry looks good.
Who better? Dig up the past and run the last of the Bush assholes? Booman and others have said it well in the past. The Republicans have buried their presidential ambitions for the foreseeable future by being unable to ween themselves off their ever-narrowing base and appeal to a larger swath of Americans (yes, even brown ones).
Jeb, with his half Anglo and half Latino son playing the role of de Blasio’s son with the people.
Three reasons not to vote for Perry:
F**k it. Reason #3 is the same as #1. Texas. It could be #2, as well.
It was a reference to Perry’s three cabinet departments that he would eliminate. A gaff I don’t think he can recover from.
I thought your “3 reasons not to vote for perry” comment was very funny and I should have said so when I read it yesterday.
Thanks!
Bernie would be a great candidate to push for better policies by running for the nomination from the left. He is very good at talking about why more leftish policies are good without spouting off about how more moderate Dems are evil sellouts and no better than the Republicans.
Hillary sails with the wind, and she’d sail right along with the kind of push to the left a Sanders candidacy might create. Having Warren in her camp playing good liberal cop to Sanders’ bad liberal cop would be the piece de resistance.
I think a Sanders candidacy would be a tonic. Just having him out on the trail, talking about stuff, would bring up a whole lot of issues that get absolutely no oxygen now. A lot of Republicans run for President with no hope of winning at all, for example, Herman Cain. But for a moment there, he was dubbed the front-runner, and suddenly everyone was talking about his stupid 9-9-9 plan.
Cain’s candidacy didn’t succeed, and his stupid 9-9-9 plan withered on the vine because it’s stupid. But somewhere in the bowels of Republican Strategyland, someone is trying to dress up that stupid 9-9-9 plan to make it sound less stupid. They’ll probably fail (mostly because the stupid 9-9-9 plan is irretrievably stupid), but there’s a miniscule chance they might not fail. And we’ll once again have to deal with that stupid 9-9-9 plan.
Sanders has far better ideas, and taking them out on the campaign trail might not sweep him to the presidency in 2016, but a good airing of good ideas might sow the seeds for better platforms and campaigns in 2020 and beyond.
If Sanders wants to run, I too would vote for him in the primary.
I see it as potentially a real positive for Hillary and the Democratic party. My assumption is no serious challenger will emerge. So by having Bernie out there raising issues, it allows Hillary to make strategic choices about where to make a stand as a liberal and appeal to her base and where to make contrasts with an eye toward maintaining her appeal to a broader cross section of opinion in the general election.
Meanwhile, all the Republican candidates will be crawling over each other (and broken shards of glass, various shades of road kill, even crippled children) to outflank each other on the right.
The one thing Hillary needs, though, is way better campaign management than Mark Penn and that ilk can provide. I hope she finds a much smarter and more strategic team. It seemed like those idiots were trying to ape Rove’s tactics, which doesn’t surprise me given who they are.
Might it not drive Hillary further Right in reaction?
Not unless she’s really stupid.
Candidates usually like to take a differentiating stand. “Me too” is also often avoided. In this case, with Bernie not being much of a threat, maybe not. But it’s a possibility.
Bernie would be a much better president than Hillary.
Much better.
If he’s in the primaries he will do well enough to draw a lot of evil feminist, PUMA fire that could go far to teach other Democrats a valuable lesson they might not have already learned about our feminist allies.
But neither the fems nor the party money-men would let him win.
The real reason for the money men is that he’s too far left on the money issues. For the fems that he is not a woman.
But we’ll hear he’s too old, and just a charming old coot not really up to the job, blah, blah, blah.
That he’s no more to be taken seriously than that congressman from Ohio who finally got married shortly after a few close encounters of the first kind.
Whoever he was.
🙂
Oh, and I would prefer Warren to Hillary, too.
And a ticket with both of them?
Wow!
Both Bernie and Warren, I mean.
Fine, dream all you want. And then get on board to get Hillary elected after the nomination is in.
If and only if she abandons the Third Way. She doesn’t have to go full FDR, but she MUST stop the industrial drain and foreswear the Trans-Pacific Partnership that Obama is pushing. Otherwise, who cares which Wall Street sellout is President?
Even budget-balancer FDR didn’t go full FDR in 1932.
1936 was a different story.
I’d rather have a Wall St. president sellout whose coattails carry progressives into office than a Wall St. president sellout whose coattails drag in fascists to office.
But, I’m not a PureTM.
I keep trying to read this as humor of some kind, and failing.
The exit to the big tent is that-a-way, if that’s what you actually think of “our feminist allies”.
They dared to oppose Obama. A cardinal sin to some.
Even if the intent was to only castigate PUMAs, that’s not what the post actually says.
Sorry, I replied to the wrong post.
I see Sanders as a more charismatic and articulate, less baggage-laden, and less ego-driven (but that’s a very low bar) Kucinich. With a slightly higher ceiling and a similarly fanatical following. I don’t see him pushing Hillary to the left, because she’d been foolish not to simply ignore him. I do see him taking volunteers and money away from other potential, more credible challengers to Hillary’s left.
Would Sanders make a better president? Absolutely. And the S-word doesn’t scare nearly as many people as it did 20 years ago. But those aren’t the people with money or media access.
Jesse Jackson – and maybe Jerry Brown in 1992 – were the last primary candidates to successfully force discussion of left issues. All the progressive standard-bearers since then, whether Dems or Greens, have turned out to be little more than exercises in ego. I wish I saw Sanders as able to buck that trend. But I don’t.
Well, they almost all have big egos at the upper levels of politics. Perhaps it’s a requirement in order to put up with all the scrutiny and personal attacks they have to endure. Warren an exception, but she’s also our Reluctant Candidate, and these types tend to continue to disappoint in regards to their ambition for higher office.
As for Sanders, he strikes me as both more intelligent and better steeped in the issues, and also as a pol with far far more gravitas than Dennis. And not weirdly stubbornly destructive, like Ralph. It’s possible that in our next lifetimes, later this century, a politician won’t have to apologize or downplay his socialist leanings.
Speaking of weird — all that sticks with me re Jerry Brown in 1992 was Flat Tax and RoseLawFirmGate. He did seem to spend a lot of time — trying to get any traction at all in the primary polls — going after front-runner Bill through his wife.
To stand up and say that you should be the Chief Executive of the most powerful country in the world requires a massive ego.
That we call this person a “leader”, and expect that person to make decisions and use a bully pulpit means that we’re ok with people having a massive ego in this situation.
It is what you do with your ego that determines whether you’re a piece of shit, or a decent human. Are you helping the greatest number of people, or hurting the greatest number of people.
Having an ego isn’t inherently bad.
In an alternate universe it might have been Giffords against Clinton. That would have been quite weird.
What would have been weird about it? Giffords consistently positioned herself as a moderate.
Because Clinton might have been the lefty in that matchup.
I don’t think Bernie has a Brooklyn accent.
You are alone in that.
Thick Brooklyn accent? I think not! I’ve never heard him say “Youse guys” as an example. Nor “Madonn!”
He sounds courtly and vaguely New Englandish.
He’s not Italian.
So your saying there’s an Italian Brooklyn accent AND a different Jewish Brooklyn accent? I can buy that because Bernie Sanders sounds nothing like Sylvester Stallone. However he also doesn’t sound like Fran Drescher.
Fran Drescher is from Queens. Geez.
Take Woody Allen. He was born in The Bronx, but he was raised in Brooklyn. However, his parents were raised in Manhattan. So, Allen’s accent is kind of Manhattan-ish. Bernie Sanders is definitely more Brooklyn. But they aren’t much different, and you probably can’t tell the difference. Bernie’s voice is deeper, obviously, but their accents are similar. Billy Crystal moves in the other direction. He’s from just outside the city (Queens). Joan Rivers is classic Brooklyn. Ed Koch is Jewish Bronx, with some Newark thrown in. Regis Philbin in non-Jewish Bronx. Let’s see…Rhea Perlman (Carla on Cheers) is Brooklyn. Barbra Streisand is pure Brooklyn.
Do any of these people talk like Joe Pesci?
No, because Pesci is from Newark and he’s Italian.
I was a Nassau County kid (Hempstead) but my grandfather worked in Manhattan all his life and they were all from Brooklyn, including my mom, so early on I got to spend considerable time downtown. Thanks for the memory lane trip.
You’ve got a better ear than mine. If it wasn’t for that little bit of New England, I could well believe that Bernie grew up on Chicago’s North Shore. And the only people I know from Brooklyn are Italian. I did work with a Jewish guy from New York (don’t know which borough) who pronounced it “New Yawk”, but aside from that he blended in. He was a bit more cynical than the rest of us.
OTOH, I can tell Tennessee from Virginia and both from Mississippi. Alabama is different yet. Likewise Texas.
VitW is from Illinois. He doesn’t know the fine points of NY/NJ/VT/NH accents. But you probably can’t distinguish a Chicago accent from a Milwaukee one. We are all hopelessly provincial.
“the thick Brooklyn accent of his working-class childhood”
That sounds like a hatchet job to me.
Whoever is running in 2016 better be building coattails now by helping reshape the Congress. In that respect, having Bernie Sanders letting the South know what an honest-to-goodness socialist sounds like is not a bad idea at all. If he’s independent, he can introduce himself in Iowa but is not obligated to win the caucuses. In fact, he would not be obligated to do anything in the primary season, but it would be useful to all the beyond D and R parties to stir it up with some legitimate policy debates on the hustings just to expose how vapid the D and R messaging has become.
Whoever defeats the Republicans must have a friendly Congress in 2017. The defeat must be total. Unfortunately the incumbent Democrats are interested in not losing instead of in winning.
I could not agree more.
I want Bernie to run for two reasons:
I would contribute and volunteer to a Sanders campaign. I still prefer others like Sherrod Brown to run though.
I like most of SB’s positions, the ones I’m familiar with. But there doesn’t seem to be a lot of passion. I’ve only seen him in one gear — soft spoken, mild-mannered, even-keeled. Good maybe in a professorial Explainer-in-Chief way, but is it the right fighting temperament to defeat the RW bully the GOP will nominate?
“socialist Jew with a Brooklyn accent”
We need more of those in Congress!
I have the privilege of voting for Sanders, and I would eagerly volunteer for his campaign.
Any Democrat but Hillary, we don’t need more Republicans like the Clintons or Obama…
This is more or less moot, since our continuing crappy economy more or less guarantees a backlash against the democrats.
any decent GOP candidate will crush the democratic candidate.
A glorious Democratic defeat is just what this country needs to cause the scales to fall from its eyes and finally embrace Social Democracy.
The salutary benefits of the ’84 and ’88 blowouts are still everywhere to be seen.
“socialist Jew with a Brooklyn accent”
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He is one of the few who absolutely opposes the H-1B system. He would eliminate it. I’m for that.
Good President
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OK President for Democrat..
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