Since he already used it, it’s not possible to adopt Barack Obama’s “Sí, se puede” motto, but Hillary Clinton is coming dangerously close to running a “no, no podemos” campaign. Whether it’s realistic or not, Bernie Sanders is saying “yes, we can” get a single-payer health care system, “yes, we can” get universal pre-K and free college tuition at our state universities, “yes, we can” achieve guaranteed sick leave and vacation for every employee, “yes, we can” raise the minimum wage to fifteen bucks an hour, “yes, we can” break up the big banks, “yes, we can” reform our corrupt campaign finance system, and “yes, we can” make the super-wealthy pay for these things.
To her credit, Hillary Clinton has been mostly trying to focus on what she, too, can accomplish. But she and her surrogates are also working hard to pour cold water on Sanders’ proposals. We’re told that the Republicans will control at least one house of Congress next year, and they’ll never vote for anything Sanders is proposing. We’re told that single-payer is a nice idea but it would be too disruptive and politically toxic to be fair or viable as a policy goal. We’re told that some people should pay for college, either because their parents can afford it or because it builds character. We’re told that breaking up the big banks isn’t a worthy goal and that it’s not the best way to address systemic risk. We’re told that $15 is too much and we should settle for a $12 minimum wage.
All of Clinton’s positions here are highly defensible, and running for president ought not to be an exercise in who can make the biggest proposals or promise the most unachievable goals. Policies should make sense, not just sound good. And candidates shouldn’t lay out a vision for a White House agenda that’s completely dead on arrival. But, if Clinton doesn’t watch out, people are going to start taunting her with “No, we can’t” chants and placards and internet memes.
It’s admittedly a difficult thing to explain to people why they can’t have the things they want. It’s even harder to explain why, in some cases, they shouldn’t even want those things. Every parent understands this.
But if Sanders overtakes Clinton with the Democratic electorate, it will be because he’s not willing to settle for pushing a political program calibrated to work in our dysfunctional, gridlocked Congress. Every time people tell his supporters that we can’t accomplish these things, they come back and say “Yes, We Can!”
Who would you like to believe?
Overall, I think Clinton is performing at a very high level as a candidate. She debates well. She did great when she testified at the Benghazi! Committee. She interviews well. She has a pretty good stump speech. She’s assembled a much better campaign staff than she had eight years ago. Her proposals are mostly within the realm of the possible.
She’s not failing as a candidate. But she has to find a way to talk sense without coming off as a party pooper who thinks the goal here is to function within the status quo.
The status quo is unacceptable, and that’s the one thing everyone seems to agree about in this country. She needs a message better calibrated to meet the times or she risks actually losing this nomination.
There’s this take …
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2016/02/the-bern-is-hillarys-fault.html
Read the piece.
Writer starts by willfully injects a strawman (Sanders advocate uses flat tax argument to sway undecided caucuser). Ends hypocritically with a generic indictment of populism and demagoguery. He could have kept it shorter and more honest by simply saying: “Sanders’ supporters are stupid and they scare me.”
They all boil down to this, the Sanders’ critiques: ‘We’re afraid we’re going to lose to something worse.’
“The status quo is unacceptable, and that’s the one thing everyone seems to agree about in this country.”
Well, that’s what everyone who is politically active, on the left or the right, seems to agree about.
It’s not clear to me that this is what everyone agrees about. This will become abundantly clear once you actually start changing things.
If the Republicans try to privatize social security or implement the Ryan budget, they will find out right quick that there are many aspects of the status quo that people are, in fact, quite happy about.
And if President Bernie Sanders tries to replace employee based health insurance with a single payer system, I expect he will find the same thing.
Indeed.
Well put. Temperamental conservatism is pretty commonplace. People are unnerved by change. This is probably why most permanent change is so maddeningly slow and most revolutions degenerate into the very thing they were rebelling against.
I am sure many will long for their HMO after the are covered by Medicare, as so many current Medicare recipients do.
Most medicare recipients can’t afford the 20% co-pay or supplemental insurance. The part C HMO’s relieve that but provide McMedicine to hold down the costs. The primary fear the public has of Universal Health Care is just that – politicians will deny treatment to hold down costs. The primary fear providers have is that politicians will hold back reimbursements to lower costs. There is ample evidence of the latter in the Medicaid program.
People love their HMO’s only in 30 second ads.
Look, it’s apparent that while not every change is an improvement, every improvement is a change. Implication, not equality.
So rather than just biting our fingernails over the fact that while voters want a change, they might not want a particular change, why don’t you just ask what the voters want? I mean, obviously that method has its own flaws since it’s well-documented that what people want and what will make them happy often diverge, but it’s a much better starting point than just assuming that because change often has unexpected pitfalls and snags that people will be happier in the long run humping the legs of the devil they know.
Wasn’t there a survey wherein 83% of voters said they wanted Bernie’s agenda? Of course, a lot of response is conditioned on the wording of the questions.
IOW she is running on a Republican platform.
But she cares!
Have you seen the GOP platform?
Here’s a fun thought experiment: excluding gay rights, what parts of Hillary Clinton’s platform, especially pre-Summer 2015 before she committed to 12 minimum wage and reduced college loans, that Margaret Thatcher would disagree with?
Hillary Clinton is already pretty much on the same level as Thatcher, policy-wise. At this point, you can only draw relative differences i.e. we may not have seen Maggie truly unleashed because of political opposition from her left that HRC won’t face.
That should get people to the polls and break demographic gridlock.
http://mattbruenig.com/2015/12/10/the-weak-hillary-case/
The British National Health Service arose more or less by accident out of the carnage of the Second World War. One hell of a lot of damage was done, and one hell of a lot of people were killed or injured, by German bombs and missiles. Those injured had to be treated, but going into the war years, health care in the UK was on a private pay-as-you-go basis. The Conservative Party government led by Winston Churchill took control of health care throughout the country on an emergency basis. The NHS, created by the Labour government that took power after the war, formalized that arrangement. It was “socialist” before Thatcher and remains that way.
So “Hillary is the new Thatcher” is a thing on the left now? Delightful.
This ahistorical horse hockey will be flushed down the memory hole if Clinton runs a good enough campaign to gain the nomination.
Bernie supporters sometimes make me question my wisdom in being a Bernie supporter.
I know that it contradicts established Democratic conventional wisdom, but why not try to grapple with that statement rather than just assume that it can’t be right because of your gut? For fuck’s sake, last night she was bragging about Kissinger’s regard for her. How can you handwave that?
The most convincing argument I’ve heard that Hillary Clinton is not Margaret Thatcher is that Clinton was just adrift in a sea of conservative revolt while Thatcher was the spearhead. Meaning that if Thatcher and Clinton had swapped brains right before she was elected PM, the UK wouldn’t have been as right wing because Thatcher actually put her career on the line for conservatism (see poll tax) and Clinton would’ve avoid the more gut-churning fights.
But a straight-up policy analysis wouldn’t show much difference. Only counterfactuals and roleplaying would show even a hint.
Oh, jeez, I dunno. Let’s start with the fact that Hillary fought hard to increase government’s role in the health care system and Thatcher fought hard to decrease it.
Regarding foreign policy, we could point out that Hillary was offered and eagerly accepted the Secretary of State appointment, not the Secretary of Defense. We could point out the areas where her Department’s diplomacy supported President Obama’s policy of disentangling our military from the massive Middle East commitments left to them by W. Bush and set the stage for the Iranian nuclear deal. Thatcher would not have been supportive of her actions.
We could note that Clinton’s voting record placed her among the most liberal Senators in the Democratic Caucus and compare that to Margaret’s determined effort to drag the Tories into very difficult and politically risky fights with Unions and others.
You’ll just have to settle for this amount of grappling with this silly claim for now. I’m sorry for you that few Democrats support this view. It sure is a great way for Hillary-haters to feel their way through history, though.
I’ve seen a dozen Republican presidential platforms.
There are two problems with “candidates shouldn’t lay out a vision for a White House agenda that’s completely dead on arrival.”
First, of course, it’s true that Republicans won’t vote for anything Sanders is proposing. Also, equally obviously, they won’t vote for anything Clinton is proposing. So any ‘vision’ of worth is, in fact, DOA. Pretending otherwise isn’t just naive, it’s Stockholm Syndrome.
The Clinton camp is perfectly right to say ‘no, they can’t.’ But they’re wrong to think ‘but we can.’ (Of course, a Dem president can affect the margins with executive orders, kill more or fewer foreign children, and nominate SC justices, all of which are v. important–but they’re not really a ‘vision.’)
However, second, given the brokenness of the system, what can the most visible member of the Democratic party do other than ‘lay out a vision for an agenda that’s DOA?’ That’s EXACTLY what we need from a president. It’s (almost) all we can expect. Clinton and Sanders will be virtually indistinguishable in what they can actually achieve. The biggest difference is precisely in which (currently unobtainable) vision they lay out.
Do we want a president who articulates grand, unobtainable goals and is quick to assign blame to the .01%, or do we want a president who articulates less-grand, unobtainable goals, and exhibits more faith in the status quo? Is the country fundamentally on the right track? Or is something going disastrously wrong? That’s the question of this primary: choosing a candidate who will express one of those opinions, while being unable to do anything about it other than shout from the rooftops.
(All that said, I don’t think Sanders has a chance. But frankly, if he can’t beat Clinton I’m not sure he can beat whatever owl pellet the Republican party coughs up. And if Clinton can’t beat Sanders, I’m pretty certain that she can’t win the general. So while I’m donating to my candidate, I’m pretty content to let the primary choose.)
Perfectly right. I’d add to this Sanders seems intent on building something that irrespective of future presidential accomplishments can change things. A movement that changes whats possible and changes the system, slowly perhaps but over the long term and with potential for growth. Hes old, its bigger than him. Something that makes hs declarations a goal to work towards across the party.
Clinton simply doesnt have this vision of movement building or party building. Obama’s version was bound up in trusting HIM and he chose to play inside ball from the beggining. Thats not to say Obama didnt accomplish things but there is no party legacy to build on.
Sanders provides a way out. Maybe its highly unlikely to work, but no one else is providing anything. Do they think the system hasnt failed?
Building the party long term is key. Remember how excited folks got about the ’50 State Strategy’? That and Obama’s advanced ground game metrics promised a bright future. What happened? The ’50 State Strategy’ was shut down and the sacred databases were used elsewhere. Pelosi put the most corrupt people in charge to find new Congress Critters and protect the existing power structure, both Dem AND Rep. Howie Klein at DownWithTyranny has been chronicling THAT part of the sad story for years.
Bernie revives the energy of unity. Bernie can turn many red districts blue. There is much hunger for a honesty that goes way beyond the neoliberal mindset and agenda.
Here’s a focused recent data point:
Bernie wins rural America! Hillary… You don’t wanna know
Check that out! It shows a powerful trend forward. The crosstabs and comments tell the tale!
Very interesting. Give the non-voter a reason and they come out. Who knew????????
Sander’s “no bullshit” style is relevant to any non-elite.
Have you listened to the Democratic centrists lately?
According to them, any plan for the future that requires re-engaging the white working class is doomed. Because, as we can see from their interpretation of the Trump campaign, they’re such relentless and unreconstructed bigots that any appeal to economic justice will fall flat until the Democratic Party does a complete surrender on social justice. They cling to their guns and religion so goddamn hard that the difference in votes between lowering Social Security’s retirement age to 55 and getting rid of it altogether is zero.
Thus because the WWC can’t be wooed on economic grounds, the Democratic Party may as well lick the boots of the overclass. They’d get just as many votes from the Democratic base (because the GOP would destroy civil rights) and gain as many not-votes from the opposition (because they’re such relentless and unreconstructed bigots) but they’d have the added benefit of some more money. Money that’s needed to defend civil rights.
Okay. So… pray tell, what actual evidence makes you think that the view of the people still voting Republican aren’t actually the same views of the bigoted troglodytes who in the largest Republican Iowa Caucus turnout in history just split Cruz, Trump, Rubio?
Because if your point is that we should be courting the fascist vote with candidates that appeal to the fascist voter, I’m not exactly sure that plan going to work like you think it is.
Because that viewpoint is little more than the composition and division fallacy?
I’m not denying that a large portion or even supermajority portion of the Republican base outright buys into that herrenvolk bullshit. What I’m disputing is the idea that it’s such a powerful, desirable idea that it overrides any other political appeals. I claim that, especially after 4 and a half solid decades of committed anti-racism and increased diversity, it’s more of a bargaining chip than a central ideological tenet of their thinking.
And because WASP supremacy is a bargaining chip rather than an unshakable pillar of thought, it can be neemed down to zero for many of these voters with enough weregild from the Democratic Party. This would of course mean that we’d have to do things like abandon neoliberalism and take analyses that show that the WWC have concerns other than the typical herrenvolk shit seriously. Read the comment section of that Washington Monthly article from other Dems; it’s depressing.
Wait… so let me see if I get this right. Both candidates are only going to be able to deliver 1/2 a shit sandwich with a slim possibility of a 1/2 a dry turkey sandwich. One candidate is openly saying that said candidate would like to do me, but the 1/2 a shit sandwich is all that’s guaranteed. The other candidate is out right lying to our faces promising to deliver a 10 course meal, but is still only going to be able to guarantee the same 1/2 a shit sandwich.
And I’m supposed to vote for the guy bullshitting to my face because he’s promising to give me a 10 course meal even knowing he can’t deliver? That sounds like a bad deal. It sounds like a worse deal for the future when you take into account exactly how many people don’t actually realize that he’s bullshitting to their faces because then they are disappointed, bitter, and turned off participating in their democracy even more. Which would be a disaster for anyone looking to actually have liberal policies in this country.
Okay… that’s a typo I’m not really sure got in there.
* would like to do more*
Pretty sure neither poster you’re responding to, nor Sanders is promising anything like a 10 course meal. But let’s not quibble about the analogy.
This argument against Sanders is central to Clinton’s in favor of pragmatism, incrementalism. She can only do so much so she’s not going to kid you and say she’ll be able to do more. I believe her! But that’s the problem.
With her pragmatic, incrementalist, Obama-esque strategy, she surely will not do much. She’ll start by asking for 1/2 a dry turkey as you say, and in the end all she’ll get is the 1/2 shit. We’ve seen this so many times with Obama over the past eight years it’s hard to understand why Hillary doesn’t get it.
Sanders on the other hand is proposing what most Americans agree is simply enough to eat. Something Democrats and Obama have not even bothered to ask for, much less make a case and fight for.
If Democrats won’t set the standard higher that Clinton proposes (the 1/2 and 1/2 sandwich you describe), then why would a voter that’s seriously hungry, maybe starving, bother to support them and how do we even begin to make any progress?
where your premise breaks down = where your argument falls apart.
MikeInOhio (this thread) nails the advantage of Bernie’s approach for eventually enjoying at least some of those 10 courses (which most of us hanging out here, including, I’m guessing, yourself agree are desirable), versus settling (right from the outset!) for that 1/2 dry sandwich.
I recently read somewhere (LGM?) the point that ALL campaigns (especially presidential, given limits of presidential power) are aspirational; and especially so in the current campaign with it likely that one or both houses stay wingnut absent an overwhelming landslide, “change” election (wrt Congress).
I don’t see/hear Bernie “promising” those 10 courses. I hear him advocating that we do all in our power to strive to whip up that meal, or at least as much of it as achievable. NOT so advocating seems the most certain path to ensuring we get nothing more than that 1/2 dry sandwich (and very likely not even, since a wingnut Congress is certain to insist we “compromise” to meet them “halfway” between that 1/2 dry sandwich [ridiculously, our decidedly NON-aspirational opening offer!] and nothing.
Bernie rightly acknowledges this will take what he calls a “political revolution” and advocates (not “promises”) exactly that.
(Parenthetically, I don’t necessarily endorse every particular of your closing parenthetical. But the rest? Exactly!)
PermaGov/DNC/Left Wing of the Right Wing campaign in action
Right here.
Writ small so’s it’s easy to understand.
Thank you once again, Counterpunch.
“…equating work with employment is like equating sex with prostitution.”
Nice.
And equating a democratic society with the U.S. electoral process as in now stands is like equating courtship with solicitation.
Nice.
Fuck it..I’m going back to bed to hide under the covers. It’s just too goddamned nasty out there for me to deal with today.
See you after the February groundhog has been sufficiently punished for taking bribes from the climate change folks.
Have a nice day…
AG
“…equating work with employment is like equating sex with prostitution.”
I made that argument in the ’80s regarding professional software engineering. Both do for money what should be done for love. Tina Turner’s Private Dancer was very popular amongst us. “You keep your mind on the money and your eyes fixed on the wall.”
I often equate being a professional music worker…as opposed to being a music “celebrity,” which in most cases is just another form of sex work in this culture… with being a sex worker. The differences? The musicians’ pay is much lower per hour but their careers are usually much longer and not nearly as dangerous.
So it goes.
AG
If there is a campaign persona that she is embracing, it is the idea of a lifelong fighter. The ad she cut that ends with “I have always supported this message” is a great example of this.
She can’t match Sanders’ raw honesty and honey badger lack of fucks to give, because she’s been bruised by that in her long past. But she can demonstrate that no one takes a punch and gets back up like her.
Is this assertion reflected in polling? A long-term favorability trend shows that she had enviable favorability prior to the 2016 primary campaign starting in earnest in early 2015. Right now, her average is at around -8%. It’s somewhat stabilized, having only gone down about -1% over the past month, but Sanders and O’Malley have been treating her with kids’ gloves. I don’t expect that number to hold up when Donald Trump starts going after her for the e-mails, her warhawkery, and her Wall Street deference.
HRC is not battletested and at her floor. It’s a comforting fantasy for her supporters, because a central tenet of pragmatism is that their worst-case scenario isn’t all that different from an average-case scenario, but it’s not actually reflected in polling.
“Sanders and O’Malley have been treating her with kids’ gloves”
That’s a laugh. The Sanders campaign staff and , especially, supporters have been quite vicious, basically doing the Repubs. dirty work for them. I have seen every ad hominem you could imagine thrown at her.
We’ll see how well Sanders holds up once the repubs. start throwing that level of vitriol his way, in earnest.
Sanders/O’Malley haven’t run ads about the Clinton Foundation, HRC flip-flopping on single-payer, HRC’s flip-flops on no-fly zones, HRC going ‘I’m proud to make Iran my enemy’, ‘we came, we saw, he died’, and of course there hasn’t been a peep about the e-mail server.
Hillary Clinton has gotten some very light treatment. Don’t confuse centrist’s persecution complexes for actual, you know, attacks now.
I wasn’t talking about TV ads. Have you looked at r/politics lately?
It annoys me that Sanders says that he is running a clean campaign, taking the high road, while meanwhile he is quite happy to benefit from the pretty vicious negative campaign being run on the internet by his supporters. It’s quite disingenuous on his part.
Please tell me that you’re joking.
She/he isn’t, takes all this very seriously, and is hypervigilent as to anything that could possibly be construed as a negative comment about Mrs. Clinton.
An example of how it goes:
That’s their definition of a hard-ball and unfair attack on Clinton. (Never mind all the stuff, including outright lies (some might say those were well spun pretzels), they’ve said about Sanders.)
This ** is lucky that Sanders tempers his honesty with politeness, an authentic response would have been first to laugh at the question and then say, “Only in your dreams.”
Don’t get me wrong, I kind of admire any pol who can work the system this way to his benefit. If he ends up being the nominee and can pull off something similar against the repubs that’d be great. We’ll have to wait for a few years for the histories to be written to see how much of this was actually grass-roots and how much was organized.
No need to wait for the histories to be written. I’ll tell you right now. It’s self-organizing. And it’s been studied in theory for at least fifty years now (perhaps longer) and in practice since the late 80s (again maybe longer). The idea that workgroups can function, perhaps most efficiently, within a non-hierarchical structure. Self-organizing. Younger people have grown up with it (hearing their uppity parents get home from work complaining about how unnecessary the boss there is, ‘if management would just butt out, metrics would improve overnight….’).
Politics has always been this way, of course. Activists start looking for a leader months, years in advance. This time out we all wanted Elizabeth Warren. Sanders stepped up instead with much the same goals. And we’re off. I send in some money. Others do social media. Phone banks, canvasing. No one needs to say how to do these things. The digital stuff takes some skills but most of it all we need to do is do it.
That’s what the history books will say in a couple of years. Hell, this history was written first draft in the months after Dean lost (and Kerry’s later loss proved the point). Self-organized political campaigns. We picked Bernie and he tells it like it is: we’re in this together.
#NotMeUs
Clinton voted for a war, based on lies which she knew to be lies, that killed a million innocent people. She did this to maintain her ‘political viability’.
She PUSHED, as SoS, for the destruction of Libya and the war on Syria. ‘Benghazi’ was about shipping arms to the terrorists in Syria via Turkey. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of innocent people have been killed AND al Qaeda and ISIS (both US supported creations via Saudi Arabia) have been given free rein to establish themselves.
Clearly, she is a warmongering psychopath. Cheney in a pantsuit.
So much of the minutia of the political discussion, both here and in the media at large fail to come to grips with the basic facts outlined above. If we, as Democrats, nominate her we will be on the path to destroying our party.
This ‘realm of the possible’ talk is why the pundit class is seen to be failing. A ‘better’ warmongering candidate is NOT something to be desired!
‘ A warmongering psychopath’. I only recently realized how emotionally and intellectually perverse her renowned statement about Gaddafi’s is: ‘We came, we saw, he died.’ Here she exhibits megalomania, cruelty, bloodlust, and her giggle expresses the pleasure it gives her to experience all this. Just perverse, I’d say, literally.
Here is a little video of Clinton speaking to a gathering that I surmise is a NATO get together. (The second part of the video is Putin’s ‘reply’.) She is browbeating, shaming, bullying and demanding that more be done to threaten Russia and China re Syria. Look at her demeanor! This is a psychopath at work!
They have to pay a price. You might wonder what that price would be, Madame Secretary. Of course she never pins herself down because she lives a world of cliches backed up by gobs of money.
Looks like a little too much Dr. Feelgood attention to me.
Uppers.
That’s the trouble with Big Pharma-treated celebs.
Like Alice In Wonderland, they need to learn which side of the mushroom to use and how much.
It’s a hard lesson for many.
Bet on it.
AG
Hey AG, I have story about that.
Back a number of years ago when many folks caught the direct satellite feeds with those big 6 foot dishes, I was at a friend’s house watching Larry King talking with the senior Bush. When they paused for the cable stations’ commercials, the live feed would continue. Well, no sooner had they cut away from the show that they then started talking about and rating the latest pharmaceuticals! Mainly the downers of the day. Halcion, Valium, etc.
LOL, they really ARE on drugs!
No shit.
Every last one of them.
They travel vast distances and never appear overtired or jetlagged.
How do they do it?
I make a living traveling as a musician and although I am not catered to the way they are, a body clock is a body clock and jet lag is damned well jetlag.
Except for the controllers.
Alwas fresh, always ready for a meeting.
Until they fuck up and take one too many.
Then?
Then you get that one debate where Obama tanked across from Romney.
Remember?
Everyone was SO surprised!!!
A little too much of something, I thought at the time.
Still do.
Or you get HRC going into coughing spasms so bad she can barely talk.
Several times recently.
Or you get Butch II unable to find his way out of a room in China.
Bet on it.
And those are just the public fuckups.
When Huma Abedin is quoted in an email as saying that HRC is often “confused”…that’s what’s going on some part of the time.
Bet on that as well.
AG
Clintons’ AUMF vote is the source of all her problems, and rightfully so.
I feel like this is often missed among the punditry. But then they’d have to admit that they fucked up, too.
But but, didn’t you hear her the other night? She is now a progressive. And she can get things done. /s
What she is is a fake who craves power for its sake. Once elected anything she said during her “progressive” time will simply be impossible to do. Seems I heard that one before. But she will love to stand up in front of the Generals and tell them to drop the hammer on whomever is on her shit list today. Even a no fly zone. Give me a real vision that we can work toward. And maybe, just maybe we can turn the congress around and kick out the ” no can do” conservatives and end these fucking wars. We need a real chance for a middle class not a make believe ” I can get things done. Now watch me bomb the shit out of the terrorists.”
To me, that’s the most unforgivable thing about the centrist wing of the party.
They look at the defeats of 2010 and 2014 and the lack of any progress in 2012… and then tell us that 2016, 2018, and 2020 will be mostly the same, with 2022 maybe being the year we can have some real progress.
Let’s see what Sun Tzu has to say about this strategy:
Yet we’re supposed to believe that a plan of ‘sit on our ass for 8 years, hope that passive demographics bail us out while no major changes happen to our coalition’ is supposed to be the height of wisdom and maturity.
And not, as common sense would tell us, the first resort of an incompetent, complacent bungler who would rather trust in the inertia of current fortune than their own abilities because otherwise they’d have to do some of that icky-wicky ‘strategizing’ and ‘tough choices’.
It is one thing when that sort of paternalistic rhetoric is “realistic”. It is quite another when it represents prior commitments to special interests not to go down those policy roads no matter how much the public wants it or objectively based on many test cases could benefit from those policies.
The perverse nature of wanting to keep paying double what other countries pay for health care and continue to get worse outcomes is striking in the health care argument. All because large insurers and health care systems are a major special and vested interest in the current system and make political donations and scare their undercompensated employees for the loss of their jobs in a deliberately jobless (by policy) economy. Yet the waste goes on.
The perverse nature of telling young people that if they want to make it economically, they must have a college degree when most adults, whether they have made or not, know that is bunk. And telling them that they must get an pay off a loan that in lots of cases will never ever be paid off even in old age (forget retirement). Is it any wonder that folks born after 1972 tilt increasingly toward Bernie (if they are voting at all)? Bernie is not propping up a wish-dream; he is describing an economic crisis for diligent people who went the education route. Talented and skilled people are working in jobs they used to work in to put themselves through college, but after college, and seemingly fated for that to be their career.
Candidates whose campaign finance plan is rooted in the special interests of the status quo cannot break from that position and cannot tack from that position without appearing to “tack” or “triangulate”.
Nothing shows how hollow the Democratic establishment has become for democratic or progressive or liberal governance than this conundrum of how to dress up the fact that you as a candidate are not going to try to address the very significant problems of the United States in imperial decline and ecological disaster, the in a time of media-reinforced free market voodoo are make individual lives worse and voters ever more angry.
That situation changes when more than one candidate in a campaign season begins to talk about the real dangers in the status quo to the point that a shift occurs in the political culture. The Democratic establishment is too timid to point out the a whole variety of emperors are running around naked–from the health care industry and insurers to the fossil fuel industry, to the education “reformers”, social security worrywarts, and debt nervous nellies. In the decision of this year between change or collapse, collapse is surging. We will pay the consequences before long. And that future looks like Ammon Bundy’s boys more than Bernie Sander’s activists.
The perverse nature of politics is that the direction of Bernie Sanders’s policies remove the pressures toward totalitarianism.
At this point is not “Yes, we can.” or “No, we can’t”. It’s more like “It’s going to be a very bad situation if we don’t.” The current situation with austerity and the health care system is that it is collapsing in its mission of healing people and succeeding wonderfully in its business of business. Why else is there so much overhead and high salaries at the top of major consolidated health care systems, for-profit and “non-profit” alike and large parts of the geography standing as health care deserts?
And why are states downsizing historically black institutions of higher education that are roughly a hundred years or slightly more old?
Well said. We live in a perverse economy where profit and markets and trade dictate national priorities. And the MIC continues to profit from endless war and so called health care insurers hold us hostage, and education is a debt trap. The Kochs and friends get rich while the middle class is fast disappearing. If we never stand up, we will never gain anything. There will be no path back. The last thing we need now is a fake – no matter how loud- awaiting a coronation. Time to take back our party from DWS and the DNC.
You expressed it better then I was going to.
But there is one thing I want to add.
Booman Tribune ~ Clinton and the “No, We Can’t” Campaign
Parents are not elected, and voters are as a rule of the age were they are assumed to be able to make adult decisions. Of course, politicians really can promise impossible things (cue “the garbage man can” from Simpsons), but wheter something is impossible should be measured against reality. It is not a matter of he said/she said.
So are single payer, tuition-free college, regulating banking and higher minimum wages in the local currency all within the grasp of a modern state? And the answer is yes, which we know because several states around the world has enacted such policies. And many of them has been poorer then the US today, so that is not an issue.
The one that might warrant a bit of discussion is higher minimum wages, but as long as it is enacted in the local currency (as opposed to enacting a minimum wage in USD in say for example Argentina) the worst outcome is a bit of inflation and a sinking currency rate. However, the US (as most of the world) has right now a problem with to low inflation, so inflation is a bonus, not a problem.
In addition to what Steggles said, I think this post is papering over what the actual differences are. This is not a difference in tactics to achieve the same goals, but rather differences in ideology (which fladem made note of in a previous thread).
Clinton is not saying “I agree with universal higher public education and single payer health care, but they’re not acheivable, so we should aim lower and be realistic.” No. She is saying she believes in means tested benefits. “I don’t want hard working Americans paying for Trumps’ kids’ college.”
David Dayen lays this out here
Objectively, she has run one of the worst campaigns in Primary Political history. She had the largest national lead, and the largest lead in Iowa of anyone with the exception of Gary Hart in 1987.
Her message is nonsense. To do any of what she wants she will have to get a GOP congress to go along.
Are we REALLY supposed to believe that the modern GOP, for whom Hillary is basically Satan, is going to do anything she wants. This isn’t the Party of John McCain.
So Bernie is right: whether you want Clinton or Sanders agenda you have to have a political revolution capable of retaking both chambers.
Hillary Clinton is the ultimate status quo candidate. Her best argument, the Supreme Court, is a status quo argument.
She is a fake peddling film flam. Make it sound good. Her way will never bring improvements since she has already ceded it by saying anything else is unrealistic. Of course it is unrealistic. You said so. Now tell me why I should vote for you. Give me an honest shot at making this a better country for us all. Let’s go for the political revolution. Just maybe some of those rednecks or people who are currently not committed will think the same way. Never try, never win. Forget the film flam.
Perhaps the experience of the Rep walling in Obama at every turn promotes a reaction of maybe we can’t. So we may indeed be working from a Stockholm syndrome attitude. Then again, seeing the press on McConnell’s declaration of inactivity for ’16 I gotta think he’s quite satisfied with more obstruction.
Clinton needs to bring more hope & energy to her campaign, yes. Energy as an act of leverage is a good tool.
As Yves Smith says today, “It’s the economy, stupid!” was a much better rhetorical tack.
Well the economy slowed down mrkedly last quarter so prepare for preident Cruz.
You know, for a faction of the Democratic Party that loves to crow about how destined the demographics are and how they’ll end up causing the GOP to collapse with no further action on their part, they sure hate applying that analysis on Bernie Sanders.
To them, winning the House is an impossible task and they’ve already made plans for 4-8 years of grinding disillusionment. And to be sure, the demographics of a HRC Coalition (which isn’t really distinguishable from the Obama Coalition ideologically or in voter composition) pretty much damn her to that strategy assuming no convenient GOP implosion.
But, you know, winning the House ain’t exactly impossible. The Democratic Party needed about a 7% vote advantage to make this happen in 2012; Obama got 4% in an election where he didn’t significantly overperform or underperform gestalt demographics compared to Dukakis/Gore/Kerry/Obama 2008. Assuming that the Democratic nominee in 2016 didn’t do any worse or better with any major demographics than 2012 Obama more than about 2%, that’s 5.5-6% right there.
To get that final 1-1.5% margin, one of two things needs to happen: the Democratic Party needs to turn out its less hardy voters (which would be the youth and Latinos) or it needs to cut into the GOP’s voters. Sanders is the only candidate even attempting to do either. I still don’t know how the experiment is going to shake out, especially considering Sanders’ other flaws, but it is the only way forward and the exit polls of 2016 Iowa look very promising.
I think Nevada, with its large population of Latinos, will be the ultimate test of this strategy. If Sanders gets a respectable portion of youth and/or Latinos I think that will justify the party going ‘all in’ on his theory of change. Personally, I think that Iowa was more than enough proof but you know how the Baby Boomer centrists are. Gen-X and Gen-Y are pretty much invisible to them and probably would still be if it wasn’t for Sanders’ extremely lopsided performance.
Starting with the New Deal/Four Freedoms visions and enacting core pieces of it, some core pieces like Medicare and Civil Rights legislation over time, lent itself to being built upon. And that’s exactly what this country did for over three decades. (Should make that four decades because Nixon wasn’t interested enough in domestic policies to obstruct small incremental changes. Hell, he signed the ERA.)
Now we’ve had four decades (beginning with Carter) of rejecting that vision and chipping away at its bedrock legislation. And we’re back to income/wealth inequality that existed before the Great Depression. Extraordinary level of national debt that purchased nothing but unneeded bombs and bankster bailouts. Every polluted river, etc. is evidence of the squandering of natural public capital for the enrichment of a few (often also for the convenience of the people that can’t comprehend cause and effect if the time scale exceeds a few minutes).
This whole — Clinton and Sanders stand for the same thing and just disagree on how to accomplish it — is total bs. As was “hope and change,” but it was the best thing on offer; so, worth a try. The whole GOP candidate field is offering the vision of he who cannot be named. That would be terrible indeed. But until the general election, that’s not the question or problem for Democrats/liberals/progressives (or whatever the hell we have to call ourselves because Rush has demonized whatever words we’ve long used as self-identifiers). Unlike presidential elections since 1972, we actually have a choice. Herbert Hoover or FDR.
They weren’t the same as to vision, political and economic orientation and ideology, and who, if elected, they would primarily serve.
We progressives often talk about how the right has been able to successfully move the Overton Window of the political policy sphere in their direction by continually touting the most radical right wing policies as the only thing that they will settle for. They shout and they shout and they shout, and beat the drum until they eventually settle for a “compromise” that gives them a part of what they want, but which ends up resetting the center of gravity of the political world. And going forward from that point, the “compromise” becomes the new starting point. And the next time they repeat the process all over again, and once again they “compromise”, but it moves the acceptable middle ground of the discussion rightward once again. And eventually, the “compromise” they settle for is the original crazy radical unacceptable position they started with.
Could that technique work for the left, too?
That’s exactly the advantage of the Sanders approach over Clinton’s objections to it.
Very well sketched out by you!
As this is Super Bowl week, maybe a football analogy is in order.
Sanders is talking like he promises to go for a touchdown on every play.
Clinton is talking like a quarterback playing for one first down at a time.
I agree, if you add that they’re playing against a team that refuses to step onto the field because they’re too busy arranging tax breaks to build another stadium.
Papa says Mama knows best as Chelsea nods and grins in agreement. Mama agrees, too, and nods back. The Guardian calls Sanders a grumpy old man with gout (was that today, I don’t remember?). Imagine calling Clinton a conniving old woman with hypoglycemia and what a shit storm that would generate.
The latter would be sexist and the howls of outrage would go on and on. There have been two standards or set of rules in the DEM primary this year. In a level playing field, Clinton might not have made it this far.
You mean against another woman?
Yes. I think if Warren had run, Bernie would not. In the years proceeding when he toyed with the idea of running, Bernie always said he would not run if someone who was looking out for ordinary Americans would run.
He knew it was a long shot and a grueling routine. He’s four years older than me, the doctors tell me I’m in very good shape for a man of my age and I’m sure I could not stand the jet lag and fatigue of talking for hours every night. This is not Nader, having a last conceit, but a man sacrificing himself for the people and their future.
Yes, may he succeed. Even in my youth (now 70) I never had the energy and stamina he needs to keep going at 74! Clinton is also remarkable for her age (68 j.), though I’m definitely not looking forward to the rest of her schtick.
Hey Quentin! I had no idea so many of us were 70+. It is collegial, but sort of sad. I guess young people just spend their time staring at their phones instead of thinking.
That’s life, as they say. Don’t underestimate young people. Sanders shown you they are there. And he’s also our age. Take inspiration from him.
“The status quo is unacceptable, and that’s the one thing everyone seems to agree about in this country.”
Yes, that is exactly true. It is also true that it’s also impossible to recalibrate status quo ideas when you are the status quo without sounding like a bold faced liar, or maybe I should say a typical establishment politician. Along with claiming to be a continuation of Obama, Hillary is attacking Bernie for saying anything that can be even remotely construed as being negative about Obama. Trying to answer the question of how to make change happen, Bernie referred to an idea expressed in the new Bill Press book `Buyer’s Remorse: How Obama Let Progressives Down’ by saying “…long after taking the oath of office, the next president of the United States must keep rallying the people who elected him or her on behalf of progressive causes. That is the only way real change will happen. Read this book.” I will certainly do that.
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/01/on-eve-of-iowa-caucus-bernie-sanders-under-fire-for-anti-obama-book-
blurb/
This a key point in the central question concerning what it’s going to take to make the changes we all so desperately need. We have not one but two battles to win. First battle, of course, is the Republican crowd of “Hell no, we won’t” but the second is the Democratic Establishment Al From crowd of “No we can’t” (because it might offend our corporate masters). Bernie is NOT promising something he can’t deliver. He tells us in almost every speech he makes it will take a political revolution to make real the changes he is proposing. Beyond using the power of the Presidency to make incremental progressive change, the real change will happen in the 2018 midterms. With two years to echo Teddy Roosevelt’s use of the bully pulpit to flower a full blown progressive movement, those midterms will be an earthquake for both Republicans and the remaining Corporatist Democrats (the final dismantling of the Clinton Machine).
The other part of the Obama legacy difficult for Hillary to continue from Obama will be his willingness to give away everything before the negotiations even begin. Hillary is already well down this path with her series of half measures to co-opt Bernie’s proposals. If you want real change, demand what you want then stand your ground. When they see you have the people behind you (and we do), real change happens. Power is never given, it is taken.
RawStory peddling crap to puff up Clinton? Sad. Is that article written by the same guy who Greenwald’s outfit outed as a plagiarist and a liar?
Yes, this is same guy fired from the Intercept for false quotes and invented sources. Do you think this David Plouffe tweet: “Sanders closing with Cornel West and embracing idea of Buyer’s Remorse with @POTUS. Be honest then Senator – run firmly against Obama record,” is real and is the Ben LaBolt tweet: “@BernieSanders endorses book trashing POTUS called Buyer’s Remorse. Quite the closing message to Obama supporters!” real or made up. I’ve heard nothing from the Clinton camp pulling this back but shame on Raw Story for publishing Juan Thompson and me for linking it. At this point I’m going with this being a genuine Hillary attack against Bernie. I do wonder if David Brock is better or worse than Juan Thompson.
HuffPo – Trump was just some rich dude we hit up for money ‘on the golf course, at his wedding, at CGI galas. Don’t know him. Not a friend. Our daughters are friends but that has nothing to do with us because our daughters are independent adults — even if both are employed by mommy and daddy.’
Who is she today? ‘Moderate is for Monday. … ‘Whatever” for Wednesday?
I think Booman likes to troll his own site.
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You should see the comments in the other place.
Quite the froth that commenters worked up here.
“She needs a message better calibrated to meet the times”
And that phrase, right there, cuts to the very heart of what’s wrong with her campaign.
One doesn’t ‘calibrate your message’, at least not if you have one that you believe in.
If her argument is “All we can do is keep things from getting worse” well, good luck storming the castle!
Marketing — when the brand becomes stale, past its sell by date, or was never any good to begin with, jazz it up. New packaging, new flavor or other additives that don’t change the product in the least, and most of all, better marketing campaigns with bigger budgets.
Works best when potential competitors are kept out of the market. Kneecapping actual competitors is usually more expensive but generally as effective. We Americans don’t mind monopolies as much as we use to.
It’s funny, this “yes we can” — “No we can’t” thing. It’s EXACTLY what I was thinking last night. Mind you, I got it from something else I read. But yeah, that’s exactly it. And it doesn’t have to be an official slogan. It’s enough that it should go viral on the tubes.
While I think that it is absolutely right that Hillary has done well in the debates and the Benghazi! hearings, my take is that while she’s an excellent bureaucrat… she’s just not a very good politician.
Sure, Hillary Clinton is smart and accomplished, but she’s not a risk taker. She’s not much of a leader. She doesn’t seem to have a very inspiring vision for the future. She’s way too focus group tested with her messaging. And then there is always the Iraq war vote and 3/4 of a billion dollars in Wall Street contributions that hang over her head- They both were “smart” political calculations at the time and just look horrendously bad now.
That’s not to say that we haven’t elected worse politicians, we certainly have. And competent status quo beats radical right proto-fascist any day of the week, but still it really seems like these times call for more than that.
what they all said.
and to repeat: HRC’s “pragmatism” is indistinguishable from support of the status quo (and an attempt to move her and Bill into the 1% if they’re not there already). there is absolutely nothing, especially if one looks at the Clinton Foundation, to indicate she / they has/ have any interest in addressing the problems of the little ppl. As far as the importance of vision goes, many ppl don’t know what they should be asking for what they can ask for down the line.