Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumBernie Sanders Is Not a One-Issue Candidate
Whether he knows it or not, the Vermont senator has laid the groundwork for a vital reimagining of American foreign policy.By Steven Cohen
March 9, 2016
Bernie Sanders only has one issue. The pundits have been telling us so all along, and the Vermont senator even admitted it himself during the last Democratic debate. [Former] Secretary [of State Hillary] Clinton says Im a one-issue personwell, I guess so, said Sanders, after months of dancing around the accusation. My one issue is trying to rebuild a disappearing middle class. Thats my one issue.
It appears his confession didnt hurt him in Michigan, where he pulled off a remarkable come-from-behind upset against Clinton on Tuesday. And looking ahead to other industrial Midwestern states in the March 15 contest, there are definitely worse things to be than an obsessive class crusader. Some campaigns spend an entire election searching for the strong, consistent message that Sanders, for better or worse, has deployed since the start of this race. Why not own a perception youre going to get tagged with anyway?
But from a policy standpoint, this is all complete nonsense. Set aside the fact that Sanders has indeed put forward detailed plans on everything from immigration to climate change. It takes a certain kind of myopia to relegate an economic platform as ambitious and multi-faceted as Sanderss to the status of single issue. Rebuilding the middle class, under Sanders, would entail nothing less than correcting half a century of macroeconomic policy. Would that it were so simple.
A more accurate version of the one issue criticism would be that Sanders has fixated on the domestic, largely to the exclusion of global affairs. Given Clintons diplomatic resume, this is probably closer to the contrast her camp originally intended to draw. Here, Sanders has indeed been a disappointment. He changes the subject whenever possible and stumbles through vague, sometimes painfully bad answers when he cant. His most compelling moments have come when he has tied Clintons interventionist streak to a broader critique of U.S. transgressions past. Still, the very framing of his preferred attackextolling the virtues of judgment over experienceconcedes that Clintons time in office is meritorious; her errors reflect flawed personal decision-making, not a fundamentally objectionable worldview.
Sanders, in that sense, has not only missed an opportunity to score points with a Democratic electorate well to Clintons left on matters of statecraft, but also deprived the country of a more profound debate as to the nature and purpose of U.S. military might.
Only occasionally do the categories used to organize presidential debates and talk-show roundtables reflect the world as it actually works. Case in point: foreign policy, defined, for the purposes of a campaign year, as a narrow set of invariably perilous scenarios, the solution to which always seems to involve blowing something up. Sanders himself is guilty of playing into this facile paradigm. A year into his improbable experiment in populist revolution, hes laid out the basis for a robust, even radical foreign policy vision and doesnt appear to realize it.
In his recent book-length study, Democratic Militarism, Northwestern University political scientist Jonathan Caverley attempts to determine when voters in a democracy will support belligerence in pursuit of international political gains. Especially in wealthy democracies, he writes, the preparation for and conduct of military conflict has largely become an exercise in fiscal, rather than social, mobilization. And after a thorough comparative analysis of various historic examples, his conclusion is that economically unequal and heavily capitalized democracies are more likely to threaten, initiate, and join small wars; and will often fight them in ways that make winning less likely. (In this case, small is a technical term meaning voluntary and asymmetric, not a characterization of the costs, human and otherwise.)
The stated aspiration of Sanderss foreign policy is to extricate the United States from its perpetual warfare footing. And the best approach to accomplishing that goal may be the one Sanders has already embraced: reining in the power of the financial sector and reversing the immense redistribution of wealth that its global expansion enabled.
remainder: https://newrepublic.com/article/131302/bernie-sanders-not-one-issue-candidate
InfoView thread info, including edit history
TrashPut this thread in your Trash Can (My DU » Trash Can)
BookmarkAdd this thread to your Bookmarks (My DU » Bookmarks)
2 replies, 599 views
ShareGet links to this post and/or share on social media
AlertAlert this post for a rule violation
PowersThere are no powers you can use on this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
ReplyReply to this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
Rec (6)
ReplyReply to this post
2 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
Bernie Sanders Is Not a One-Issue Candidate (Original Post)
Jefferson23
Mar 2016
OP
Yep, they don't know what to with Sanders since they're clogged with special interest money and
Jefferson23
Mar 2016
#2
pat_k
(9,313 posts)1. Good to see someone highlighting reality.
He never was a "one issue" candidate... particularly the "one issue" (break up the banks) they like to pin on him).
It's great to see an analysis of the possible impact of his foreign policy stances.
Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)2. Yep, they don't know what to with Sanders since they're clogged with special interest money and
a candidate who is a hawk. I was so glad when she left, she is not Kerry.