if you give them a reason!

Bernie has been advocating the same things all his life. I doubt he'll change his tune after 4 or 8 years. That will move the needle, and that is progress. If you only attempt what you are likely to achieve, you have already compromised before you begin.

I'm so old, I remember when Reagan was elected, and America started it's 30-year slide to the Right. The Conservatives never stopped pushing the envelope. They didn't care about what they thought they could pass on any given day. They didn't care about "triangulating," or whether or not they might upset their opponents.

And now, 35 years or so later, here we are. Endless wars, reproductive rights on the ropes, social safety net programs on life support, income inequality at highs we haven't seen in a hundred years...

Publicly advocating for things you may not get right away isn't naive. It's good long term strategy. The conservatives get this, and we should set our pride aside and learn from them. When you're right, you're right.

If you need two, order eight. You'll get four; trade one, store one, then get to work.

Start from a *strong* position and THEN if you have to - compromise. Don't *immediately* capitulate and start of in a weak position.

We've as a country gotten used to begging for scraps of the rich that we've lost our voice to stand up for what is fair.

The Overton Window. The frame around the current political zeitgeist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

The far right has been dragging the Overton Window to the right hard since Reagan. All they have to do is suggest an extreme right-wing position, then compromise on a tiny portion of it, and it drags the window that much further to the right, making all of that middle ground seem positively reasonable by comparison. Trump's doing a great job of dragging it to the right and down into the mud, too. That's how some people (on the right) can look at Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and imagine them as comparatively "reasonable" candidates.

We need a big voice on the left to do this. Extreme left-wing policies like 100% tax rate over $1million annual income! Oh, you don't want 100% tax rate over $1million annual income? Okay, we'll compromise and make it 95%. See how reasonable we can be? That would drag the Overton Window left so fast your head will spin

We both brought up the Occupy movement and how it was supposedly a failure and now everyone (who isn't an asshole conservative) is talking about the 99% and income inequality.

We have to lay the groundwork.

I was so happy when someone told me about the Overton Window as a concept. It was something I had been thinking of, and trying to define for ages, and then, hey... here's this very efficient conceptual framework to describe that very thing!

The Republicans seem to have an intuitive grasp that if you want to get your policies enacted, it's easier to start by moving the Overton Window, so that your ideas are "in the air" and what you want just starts to sound obvious and inevitable.

Liberal policy solutions like Medicare for All are the right answer, but for 30 years they have been so far outside the Overton Window that people literally lack the framework for discussing it. The only reaction the general public is capable of is along the lines of "isn't that what some European socialist thing?"

It's long past time to start dragging the Overton Window to the left again.

We've been sliding rightward since St. Ronnie of Reagan started us done that path. Our choice in the primary is pretty simple: nominate a candidate that will continue to move us rightward, albeit at a slightly slower rate that the Republicans, or nominate someone that will try to get us started leftward back towards the middle.

nailed it!

about what america was like before ronald reagan. i was totally shocked when a young activist friend of mine told me she was voting for hillary. an entire generation has been spoon-fed diminished expectations of what government should and can do. and contrary to the claims of the neos, 'the failed social programs of th 60's and 70's' were not failures at all. i did not graduate from college in debt, and neither should young people.

...and it is all of a piece to dumb down the populace...make it so hard to hone our saws.

Wish one would write that diary. I'd rec it.

You said it all!

he didn't want a public option, so he didn't offer one. The Insurance companies helped to write the ACA, after all. Bernie WANT single payer. That's the big difference. Hillary basically wants all the same things that the GOP wants and no input from liberal Democrats, so she's hoping to silence us for good by leaving us without a party to represent us.

Thanks for the thread, phantom power.

cannot accomplish that but hew can get it started then it is up to us to finish by giving him a congress that is wiling to work for their constituents rather than wall street.

(on edit)

My bad there, I forget that for a majority of them wall street is their constituency.. that is one of the major changes needed

Is the insurance lobby's dream, forced participation in a FOR PROFIT industry! Medicare for all is the solution.

So much better is possible. People need to hear that more often.

something isn't right with ACA. People who used to be middle class who are now poor and those that have been and continue to be poor are receiving thousands of dollars in premium and copay bills they cannot afford, not to mention prescription prices that keep increasing. People know when something is wrong. They know when something isn't right. People are not as stupid as the Republicans and Reagan Democrats believe them to be.

because many doctors do not accept medi-cal. the clinics are so overwelmed, you are lucky to get an appointment in 90 days. honestly...i was better off without ACA, but several of my frieds were not. we officially have a two-tiered system in california...one for medi-cal, and one for people with private insurance.

You don't ask for the least amount you think you can get.

then breaking promises."

Part of making the case for single payer is making the case that it's worth the cost.

if you are making a good, public case for Policy-X, and you end up failing, or having to compromise, because of the obstructionist flying-monkey Republicans in Congress, then that ought to be a pretty easy story to tell. Tell it convincingly, and you might even start to convince some people to stop voting for obstructionist Republicans in future elections.

There are various kinds of promises that might be made, and then broken. For example, if somebody promised that they will be able to "work across the aisle," and then failed to do that. The other side of the aisle doesn't really want to be "worked with." Is that "breaking a promise?" I don't really think Obama was dishonest when he sold himself as somebody who could do that, but I've always wondered why he imagined that was going to go well. He had been there, he must have watched the flying monkeys in action.

Obama made the argument for it, and supported it, but Congress killed it (let's not forget that the conservative party includes some Democrats). Joe LIEberman wound up threatening to filibuster--and thereby killing--his own proposal to expand Medicare.

What happens when millennial voters turn out for Sanders, expecting revolution, free healthcare, and getting their student loans forgiven, and then none of that happens? the lesson they learned from Obama was to not trust politicians. why would they be less cynical towards Sanders?

What I think he'll do is say, "Let's work on single payer. Elizabeth Warren is introducing bill X in the Senate, and Representative Y is introducing bill XH in the House. Please sign this online petition, and call your representative, senators in support. We may need to have a march."

That's my take on what his 'political revolution' would look like. So, yeah, if the Millennials get lazy and don't want to do all that work, then we're still fucked, except for the fact that Bernie is bringing the stuff up and trying to enact it. The Dems can use this fact and their support in subsequent elections to get the Republican idiots voted out.

'Cause it ain't gonna happen tomorrow, that's for sure. Too many capitalist 'profit is more important than human life' greed heads having input now. But, hey, Obama may start us off by using the bully pulpit to get the Senate to confirm his Scalia replacement. I just hope Obama doesn't choose a right winger 'centrist,' and instead chooses a progressive that's gonna work to overturn Citizens United, etc.

...he'll tell you to close your browser and actually call or write your Congressional representatives and tell them in your own words why it's important to you. Online petitions are worthless.

local offices and hitting the streets for a march.

This level of engagement is going to be necessary if we are to wrest our government back from corporate interests so that we can actually have economic and political democracy.

We all know it's not going to be easy.

And, Bernie will have us - all of his supporters to put pressure on these lizards to make things like single payer happen.

On all the important issues and stand tough on anything in his power to do so.

fight for it and ask for out help.

I would rather have as president somebody who genuinely has the best interests of the American people at heart--somebody I could trust--than somebody looking towards the next election or whatever. Maybe this person wouldn't be able to force things through Congress that Congress would never approve... but he (am I showing my hand here?) would at least have OUR priorities in the forefront.

I wouldn't blame David for not always being able to defeat Goliath... but I would vote for David rather than Goliath every time.