Can you believe that.

"her" health care plan was arguably a diversion so we would not look at the trade deal which was being put together to BLOCK affordable health care.

Use Dodd Frank, it is good he got on the right track. In time he will see other agenda items from Hillary and it would be good to see him working from the Senate to accomplish these issues.

up our right to have affordable health care.

It required that Glass-Steagall be repealed - allegedly- It limits financial regulation.

works, he just did not give the section in which Hillary provided. Even now I don't hear Sanders on the Glass Steagall, it would not have prevented the financial crisis and in fact the CFMA in which Sanders voted was a big contributor to the financial crisis. There is some areas which needs to be added to Dodd Frank, Sanders knows this now. Hillary is wanting to tighten the regulations on banks, it will work.

And nooo.. Hillary is not going to regulate banks my friend.

he was doing Hillary a favor-

he was covering up her husband's disastrous trade deal for her.

the one that was claimed forced them to repeal Glass Steagall.

Read my links above. Did you?

You say he is doing Hillary a favor by going to her position, he changed to help himself, glad he got it right now.

exactly what the article says.

Americans are a confused and blinkered bunch. And the damage they do to themselves because of this is YUUUGE.

Americans do live in a tight and controlled media bubble

One can go online and read virtually any news source from anywhere around the world. In addition, there are literally thousands of independent news sites covering a very wide variety of stories in great depth.

Last edited Tue Apr 26, 2016, 09:35 AM - Edit history (1)

Especially the bolded part:

Throughout the nomination process, Bernie’s critics always seem to be asking the wrong questions. The most common one I see is “how is he going to pay for all of this?” This question misses the point entirely. Even if economists say that he can’t, does that really invalidate everything he’s aiming to achieve? If he can’t pay for all of it and the only thing that actually gets passed is universal college education and a reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, is that such a horrible thing? Why does it have to be so all or nothing? That’s why it also baffles me when people say that they don’t want the kind of revolution Mr. Sanders is pushing—the reality is that even if he is swept to victory, the amount of change he’ll actually be able to implement won’t be half of what he wants to do.

I don't think he's going to win, but I do think that his platform is the future. I differ from a lot of Bernie supporters in that I strongly think we should all vote for whoever wins the nomination, even if it's Hillary, because the more progressive democrats who are likely to follow in future elections will have an easier time following Hillary than Trump, but I do think this is the future. Millenials vote progressive, and they are our future.

And you are right, it does not invalidate his vision. The fact that we are the richest country in the world and can't do it? Clinton supporters who think that are simply less smart. I'm sorry. We have the most money on the planet and can't afford to do what poorer countries can. Mind-boggling.

Nazi's and two world wars on their turf, they get it. Bernie may be our last opportunity to avoid the depths of despair Europeans have endured. I guess Americans may have to get there themselves before they finally learn to talk politics honestly (not just tv/political personalities/celebrities), be suspicious rather than easily conned, pay attention to what is important in a society (healthcare, education, equity, regulations, living wage and a safety net), and start listening to informed people rather than corporatists who tell them what they want them to hear to keep the profits coming.

Americans are comfortable, easily led, and just plain lazy and ignorant when it comes to politics. Our country is already an oligarchy. It just hasn't devolved into the mass poverty it will become eventually. Anybody who can't see that has no vision.

BTW, let's all have another war! Guaranteed under Clinton.

Thanks for the thread, Triana.

That's precisely my problem with his candidacy. He's slightly to the left of Clinton yet he claims to be leading a "revolution" and his supporters act like she's worse than Bush. He has consistently voted with Democrats but stubbornly refused to actually join the party until it suited him. His voting history reveals that he is in no way a truly anti-war candidate, and he's to the right on the issue of gun control. There just doesn't seem to be much there there.

that Bernie is "mildly left of centre", Clinton is "right of centre" and "Donald and Ted? Man, those guys are so far right of centre you couldn’t plot where they exist—they’re pretty much off the spectrum." In other words, Clinton and Sanders are fairly close together, a little to the left and right of center, while the republicans are way over to the extreme right.

Sanders supporters seem to want us to believe that Clinton is way over to the right with the Trump and Cruz while Sanders is a leftist revolutionary, which is simply not the case.

Right of center is too far right for my taste and our needs, but it is not the same as Trump's and Cruz' mindset.

His whole campaign is based on convincing voters that Clinton is a republican and he's the only true progressive in the running. And he has a long history of claiming that there's no difference between democrats and republicans and using terms like "tweedledee and tweedledum" https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/02/04/when-bernie-sanders-ran-against-vermont/kNP6xUupbQ3Qbg9UUelvVM/story.html

I still don't agree completely, but since 1986 reality has been rapidly catching up with it. Clinton is terribly compromised by Big Money, and in that way resembles garden-variety Republicans. What I have to bank on is her history of at least being a Democrat, and the possibility that once her personal ambition is fulfilled, she would finally feel free to push some progressive reforms.

Bernie Sanders is far to the left of Hillary Clinton on economics and militarism.

He is mildly left of center -- relative to other Western democracies -- but the "center" in the USA has moved so far to the right that a right-of-center politician like Hillary Clinton is left-of-center in this country, while Bernie sanders is viewed as radical left.

Regarding "anti-war" do you see no difference between someone who voted for the Iraq war and someone who spoke out strongly against it?

Bernie Sanders "stubbornly refused" to join the Democratic Party for all those years because he is indeed to the left of the DNC establishment. As a legislator he was faced with limited choices on legislation, just like voters are faced with limited choices of candidates. He consistently voted with Democrats on legislation because doing so was better than voting against it or not voting at all.

He's mildly left of center, she's to the right of center, and meanwhile the mainstream of the republican party is way over to the extreme far right. Sanders and his supporters want us to believe that she's over there with Cruz and Trump and not just slightly to the right of Sanders.

Being against the Iraq war is great. I was personally opposed to it. But I was also opposed to the war in Afghanistan. Sanders isn't a pacifist, and the difference between he and Clinton is simply a matter of degree. As the article says, he's mildly left of center. I think he's preferable on that issue, but the difference between them isn't as wide as some people would have us believe.

As for your last paragraph, it sounds like you're describing a very ineffectual politician who has spent decades off in the wilderness. I consider myself to the left of Sanders, which given the choices I'm faced with means I vote for Democrats 100% of the time and Republicans 0% of the time. Therefore I'm registered as and identify as a Democrat even though the mainstream of the party is far to my right. As you say, doing so is better than staying home as I suspect some disappointed Sanders supporters are going to end up doing.

Really? I would have to see an actual quote by Sanders to believe that.

You will no doubt find statements by Sanders and his supporters who say both Clinton and Cruz are beholden to big money corporate interests, or big banks, or the military industrial complex, and that is correct -- to an extent.

But when it comes to the extreme rightwing ideology of Ted Cruz the Dominionist or Donald Trump the loose cannon racist sexist demagogue, I do not see Sanders supporters asserting that Hillary Clinton is the same as them. You are painting with a very broad brush with that argument, lumping everything together.

And there is an enormous gulf between Sanders and HRC on militarism. Everything is relative. You are comparing Bernie to the pure anti-war stance of taking no action against the perpetrators of 9/11, which is practically non-existent in Washington. Among actual elected representatives and the American public, Bernie Sanders is solidly on the anti-war side of the spectrum.

How much different would things be right now if we hadn't invaded Iraq?

As for your last paragraph, you are describing yourself as a very ineffectual voter who is out in the wilderness, voting with the Democrats due to lack of a better choice. You have been in the same boat as Bernie Sanders all these years, striving for something better but coming up against a stacked deck.

Now, in Bernie Sanders, millions of voters who've been out in the wilderness for decades and young voters with hopes for a better future have a candidate who embodies those aspirations more closely than anyone since FDR with a serious chance at winning the presidency.

Relative to the status quo which has been a steady rightward drift, this is indeed a political revolution.

We finally have a chance to come in from the wilderness and take hold the reigns of government, but you seem predisposed to downgrade and dismiss this opportunity.

I don't believe he has a "serious chance at winning the presidency", especially at this point in the race. So my concern is with the people who claim they'll never vote for Clinton if she gets the nomination. I hope that if she does get the nomination, the majority of Sanders supporters will come to agree that they're not that far apart in the overall spectrum of US politics as it stands at the moment. And that voting for her as the lesser of two evils is exactly what you're saying Sanders did all of those years in congress when he voted with Democrats for flawed legislation because it was the best he could hope for! Voting for Clinton doesn't make democratic voters corrupt corporate sellouts anymore than Bernie caucusing with Democrats does.

I will vote for Democrats in the general election, and for Hillary if she wins the nomination and there is a remote chance my state of Illinois could swing to the R. But that wasn't my bone of contention with the content of your posts.

Not per capita, pure volume.

The right pieces of Socialism are good for business. Single payer would be a huge boost to small and large businesses alike.

except in the weak meaning of "socialist" acquired in the U.S. since the Sanders campaign (or Occupy). Sanders is a New Deal Democrat, but over the last 40 years our own ruling class, media and pundit-banditry have redefined that as commiecommiecommie.

Unions in the US are considered socialists even though they represent the working class. In Germany, it’s required for worker representation to be half of board members of companies. In Germany, the industrial and financial sectors are highly regulated keeping jobs from being outsourced and ensuring main street benefits rather than just wall street. According to conservative ideology, this kind of socialist practices and union power should destroy the economy and destroy innovation and yet the complete opposite is the result.

Germany is not a socialist country, and Sanders is not a socialist, but it's okay - I support the New Deal Democrat Sanders and the U.S. could learn a lot from present-day Germany, especially on how to do democracy.

and world during the post WWII ascendency of the USA.

The myth has frayed into a joke with the turn the USA has taken, particularly post 9/11.

Otherwise, the 'survivor' wilderness we're venturing into where large multinationals control all governments and economies will be irreversible.

Very well said.

Hillarians get pissed when I call her right-wing, but she is far to the right of the Repubs of my youth.

Bernie would have been in the middle of the Democratic Party's spectrum back then. Except for his distaste for war; war (tragically) has always been beloved by both parties.

I'm just guessing here but maybe you should try to convince the electorate you want to elect you before considering anyone else.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]All things in moderation, including moderation.[/center][/font][hr]

And the fallacy that the US is RW (and that Hillary is in any way progressive) is just that.

Corporate propaganda works.

Not ENOUGH Americans support him, we can agree on that, right? Because it's kind of obvious now.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]All things in moderation, including moderation.[/center][/font][hr]