2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumNoam Chomsky: Bernie Sanders is Not a Radical, Has Mass Support for Positions on Healthcare & Taxes
The other interesting aspect of Sanders’s positions is that they’re quite strongly supported by the general public, and have been for a long time. That’s true on taxes. It’s true on healthcare. So, take, say, healthcare. His proposal for a national healthcare system, meaning the kind of system that just about every other developed country has, at half the per capita cost of the United States and comparable or better outcomes, that’s considered very radical. But it’s been the position of the majority of the American population for a long time. So, you go back, say, to the Reagan—right now, for example, latest polls, about 60 percent of the population favor it. When Obama put through the Affordable Care Act, there was, you recall, a public option. But that was dropped. It was dropped even though it was supported by about almost two-thirds of the population. You go back earlier, say, to the Reagan years, about 70 percent of the population thought that national healthcare should be in the Constitution, because it’s such an obvious right. And, in fact, about 40 percent of the population thought it was in the Constitution, again, because it’s such an obvious right. The same is true on tax policy and others.
So we have this phenomenon where someone is taking positions that would have been considered pretty mainstream during the Eisenhower years, that are supported by a large part, often a considerable majority, of the population, but he’s dismissed as radical and extremist. That’s an indication of how the spectrum has shifted to the right during the neoliberal period, so far to the right that the contemporary Democrats are pretty much what used to be called moderate Republicans. And the Republicans are just off the spectrum. They’re not a legitimate parliamentary party anymore. And Sanders has—the significant part of—he has pressed the mainstream Democrats a little bit towards the progressive side. You see that in Clinton’s statements. But he has mobilized a large number of young people, these young people who are saying, "Look, we’re not going to consent anymore." And if that turns into a continuing, organized, mobilized—mobilized force, that could change the country—maybe not for this election, but in the longer term.
THE REST (including video):
http://www.democracynow.org/2016/4/27/noam_chomsky_bernie_sanders_is_not
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Octafish
(55,745 posts)It just seems radical to those raised since Reagan. They don't know any better.
Armstead
(47,803 posts)And I hate to say it, but it's largely due to the influence of the Clintons.
Triana
(22,666 posts)The entire party and its followers have COMPLETELY LOST any idea of what a DEMOCRAT even IS.
vintx
(1,748 posts)They sure act like they're so aware and clued in.
but I would say it just seems radical since the Clintons sold the Party to the Koch Bros.
and BTW they seem to be closing the loop now that she is trying to partner up (in public) with the BUsh people and neocons.
uponit7771
(90,339 posts)
TheBlackAdder
(28,201 posts).
The Super-HRC and Super-SBS fans lack a lot of independent critical thought.
.
uponit7771
(90,339 posts)TheBlackAdder
(28,201 posts)uponit7771
(90,339 posts)... purity test and fanitsizing leaders who thinks "collective energy" will trump me first conservatives in congress
bemildred
(90,061 posts)---
Perhaps inevitably, it was not long before Žižek turned, in his discussion with the Guardian columnist Gary Younge, from rightwing populism in Europe to rightwing populism in the US, and its unavoidable, totemic figure: Donald Trump.
“Read Trump closely – it is difficult to do, I know – and if you extract his total racist and sexist stupidities, you will see that here and there, where he makes a complete proposal, they’re usually not so bad,” said Žižek. “He said he will not totally dismantle universal healthcare, raise the minimum wage, and so on.”
“Trump is a paradox: he is really a centrist liberal, and maybe even in his economic policies closer to the Democrats, and he desperately tries to mask this. So the function of all of these dirty jokes and stupidities is to cover up that he is really a pretty ordinary, centrist politician.”
But Europe’s current predicament, Žižek argued, is that its most potent political forces – the technocratic power base in Brussels on one hand and rightwing nationalist parties such as Pegida and Front National on the other – represent the greatest danger to the universalist values on which the European Union, or any form of transnational government, ought to be predicated.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/28/slavoj-zizek-donald-trump-is-really-a-centrist-liberal
brooklynite
(94,571 posts)Redwoods Red
(137 posts)That should be a real wake-up call to the party.
The Democrats are going to run a very establishment candidate in this most anti-establishment year.
brooklynite
(94,571 posts)Armstead
(47,803 posts)Sometimes, supposed Democrats sound very undemocratic
Scuba
(53,475 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Kick for Truth.
CobaltBlue
(1,122 posts)alcibiades_mystery
(36,437 posts)
appalachiablue
(41,132 posts)
