On Becoming Anti-Bernie

[seaglass]

This article is long but well worth the read, so much in here that I agree with. The paragraph below really stood out to me because it confirms the suspicions I've had from the beginning.

https://medium.com/robinalperstein/on-becoming-anti-bernie-ee87943ae699#.mdnwbfk3q

That led me to more research. I concluded that the fact that Sanders only got three bills through Congress (two of which were for naming post offices) wasn’t the only meaningful measure, so I looked at the legislation he introduced during his senate career. It turns out that, every year, year after year, he introduced the same legislation to make a point, and no one else ever seems to have signed on to it. To me, this looked like showmanship rather than governance — an exercise designed to highlight his own support for a very progressive agenda. The hard work is to draft a bill that your co-legislators can get behind, in the political climate that exists and in the place where you work. I concluded that Sanders was less interested in actually accomplishing anything than he was in staging protests where he could claim some kind of moral high ground, not interested in getting in the weeds and doing anything to actually achieve his goals within the Congress he worked in. This research put Sanders’ supposedly pristine progressive agenda in perspective: it is very easy to maintain that agenda if you never make the hard choices necessary to get things done.

(I omitted the last rather sharp sentence of this paragraph to avoid a hide from sensitive folks)

On edit: Sorry about the link, if you want to read it you'll have to copy the entire URL into a new tab or go to medium.com, click on Politics and scroll down to find the article

Edit again - updated link Thanks IamMab!

[apcalc]

1. He is persistant

Not much of a doer tho, an idea guy -truly can't see him holding up under 24-7 under intense pressures.

[IamMab]

2. With Medium on DU, you gotta remove the @ from the link

Here's a working version:
https://medium.com/robinalperstein/on-becoming-anti-bernie-ee87943ae699#.gl4k13up2

Right now, your link just goes to medium.com, not the article you're citing.

Just an FYI.

[HillareeeHillaraah]

3. I've written it before but...

...with stats like his, if politics was like baseball, he'd be traded, not made captain of the team.

[MattP]

4. Great read, sort of how i feel

I liked him at first but now no way

[Surya Gayatri]

5. Would that more under 35s cared enough to do as thorough research

as Robin Alperstein, instead of swallowing the BS hype, hook, line and sinker.

[creon]

7. Do research

And, then vote.
Voter turn out is quite poor.
Especially in off year elections.

[rock]

16. And yet

It's BSers that bleat, "Don't call us uninformed voters!" Maybe they're just being ironic.

[creon]

6. I do not see the attraction

Sanders does not impress me.
If nominated, I will vote for him.

[Fla Dem]

8. Bernie's never been a consensus builder. He's always been someone shaking his fist

at the establishment but doing nothing constructive to improve the situation incrementally. He wants a "Storming the Bastille" moment that will never happen in our Democratic Republic. And actually storming the Bastille lead to decades of oppression of the common people and executions of opposing revolutionary members.

[Her Sister]

9. Haha! I just posted too!

This article is great!! long! long! Everything under the sun covered about BS! It's a MUST READ! So much to excerpt there!!!
Something for everybody! Points we have been making and thinking and some new information too!!



https://medium.com/robinalperstein/on-becoming-anti-bernie-ee87943ae699#.u3ykfl9te

HRC IS READY AND WE ARE READY FOR HER!!!

[athena]

10. Great article!

Thanks for posting it. It's devastating and worth reading in its entirety. Certainly taught me things I didn't know.

[athena]

11. An excerpt that is particularly to-the-point:

According to Team Sanders, there is no legitimate reason not to support him — if you don’t, it must be because you are a shill, an establishment member, an apologist for the status quo, not a true progressive, not a real liberal. There is no space for considering that Planned Parenthood and NARAL endorsed Clinton because she has been a champion for reproductive rights, not simply a supporter. There is no space for considering that Sanders’ paucity of endorsements from unions and organizations and other politicians could possibly be based on the view that Clinton is more qualified, more experienced, has a better platform, is a better leader, is more likable, is more likely to achieve progressive goals, has done more to advance equality, has a better record, or any other metric. Hillary’s disagreement with aspects of Sanders’s proposals (disagreements which are relatively minor in any event) couldn’t possibly be based on her conclusion that his ideas are not well thought out, or have potentially offsetting negative consequences, or are unworkable; no, her disagreement must be a function of her corruption or her political calculation.

[UtahLib]

12. Great article! eom

[forjusticethunders]

13. yeah that pretty much sums up

why I'm probably going to change my vote when the primaries hit Maryland. Bernie lines up with my ideology, but leadership, character, temperament and intelligence are non-ideological and non-partisan, and having the right ideology does not make up for this. It pains me to say this, it really does but Bernie Sanders is unfit for command.

With that said, things are really bad for a lot of people in this country, especially for a lot of people in my age cohort, and Bernie was able to capture that desperation and frustration with a system that has left them behind. But what I've had to realize that this state of affairs goes way beyond individual candidates, and really speaks to how the "professional Left" has abdicated any kind of pretense of political organization or movement building. Leftism has pretty much been a Petrograd LARP convention for 40 years. More about virtue-signaling how progressive and enlightened you are compared to the "sheeple" than actually improving people's lives. The irony is that if we had started incremental movement back in 1984 then we could be in a position to make big changes now, but that wasn't exciting enough I guess.

[Koinos]

14. The article says it all.

Sanders lacks presidential character and temperament, and he has practically no ability to work with others to get things done.

I maintained this many months ago, when I shifted my support to Martin O'Malley.

Sanders' tragic flaws have only become more pronounced over time. He hasn't matured since his reprehensible and failed campaign against Governor Kunin in Vermont.

[rock]

15. I could have written the first several paragraphs

And many of the others. The most blaring attribute of Bernie's is his lack of grasp of reality, and that is what really soured me to him. Great article!

[DawgHouse]

17. All hat, no cattle.

[Cha]

18. Mahalo seaglass~

[LisaM]

19. K&R

Great read.

[ismnotwasm]

20. I read this yesterday

I describes how I feel almost exactly, except I was wary of Sanders at the beginning as well. I hope everyone does read it, it's well worth reading the length of it--the author isn't fooling around

[fleabiscuit]

21. That is freaking gold. K&R!