Since when do we let Republicans decide what is and isn't possible for America?

[eridani]

Since when do we let Republicans decide what is and isn't possible for America?

http://jackpineradicals.org/showthread.php?4403-Since-when-do-we-let-Republicans-decide-what-is-and-isn-t-possible-for-America&p=24199#post24199


Republicans began fighting to privatize public education at a time when even the concept of that seemed foreign to most Americans - when there seemed to be no way in hell that governments controlled by Democrats would ever go one inch down that road. That didn't matter to them, they just kept advancing the notion until they gained some foot holds they could build on. Tuition free public colleges and universities may sound pie in the sky now, but they once were well established in many places, including California. That was at odds with the vision though of Ronald Reagan and the conservative movement behind him. Here is one summary of what happened to those tuition free public institutions:

"California’s public-university system, still the largest in the nation, abolished tuition three months after it was founded in 1868, implementing instead a fee for additional services, such as health care, that at first was tiny.

The era of free tuition ended, ironically, with the student movement of the 1960s, just as campuses were getting more populous, diverse, and democratic. Ronald Reagan made the University of California a major punching bag of his 1966 campaign for governor of California, with the encouragement of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who saw campus peace activists as dangerous subversives. Upon taking office, Reagan managed to have UC president Clark Kerr fired—he had been the architect of mass higher education not just in California, but across the country—and hiked fees at the UC colleges to the approximate levels of tuition charged elsewhere."

Democrats have learned to check their visions at the door of a Republican led Congress. It is one thing to mobilize your forces for some Congressional battle on an issue you believe in, only to then fall short of fully prevailing. The more extensive your mobilization, the better compromise you are likely to achieve regardless. It is another thing to fall to mobilize and fight for what you believe in because you can not clearly identify a sure path forward to certain victory. Even worse is a basic lack of faith that what may be indeed be impossible today can in fact become possible tomorrow if the battle is fully joined.

It's not that Bernie Sanders can't do the math - he can count seats in Congress same as anyone else. It's just that he can see the folly in unilaterally disarming our dreams. Pardon my censored French but Bernie is right. F*ck that sh*t. We would all be working 60 hour weeks today if a bunch of Wobblie organizers looked at the strength of the Mill Owners who opposed them and said "You better go home to your families, boys" rather than "Which side are you on?"

[HughBeaumont]

1. Since they control the purse strings.

Since they gerrymandered their way to permanent seating.

Since we aren't going to mobilize by the millions and tell them what we want and not leave until we get it.

And even if we did, they'd be like " PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT. Make us, Commie. Our Military and police will blood-dust you faster than you can say 'Universal Health Care'. We run this bitch now. Oh, and we also control the media that keeps suburban and rural white voters racist and stupid. Gonna take that down too?"

[eridani]

2. I see. Fuck the 99%. Just roll over and play dead

There is nothing at all worth any effort to fight for.