2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumSanders has more Foreign Policy experience than 5 of the last 6 first term Presidents. Just Sayin...
Going back to 1976 - that's 40 years - the only person to have moved into the White House with more foreign policy experience than Bernie Sanders has now was George Herbert Walker Bush in 1988. And Bernie Sanders actively took part in the Congressional debate about going to war with Iraq, probably the biggest foreign policy blunder in any of our lifetimes. Unlike many leading Democrats, Sanders got it right,
I don't deny that Hilary Clinton has more foreign policy experience that Bernie Sanders does. And it isn't news to anyone how both of them voted on the Iraq War Resolution. But I think most people have lost sight of the fact that America traditionally elects Presidents who enter office with precious little foreign policy experience to speak of, and this world has been a dangerous place for as long as I can remember. Bernie Sanders has far more personal experience than most new presidents have regarding national security PLUS his judgement has already been tested - when it mattered most.
daleanime
(17,796 posts)Ferd Berfel
(3,687 posts)CorporatistNation
(2,546 posts)Bernie has it! Hill... not so much...
Ferd Berfel
(3,687 posts)They sold the Democratic Party to the Corporatist Oligarchs Decades ago. But We're just supposed to forget that.
Do you think that this (below) had ANYTHING to do with: NAFTA, GATT, WTO, Telecommunications Act, ending welfare as we knew it, Glass-Stegall, etc, etc, up to, and including TPP?
The Rightwing Koch Brothers Fund the DLC
... the Koch brothers have also been funding the Democratic Leadership Council. Welcome fellow Democrat! ...
http://www.democrats.com/node/7789
Do deep-pocketed "philanthropists" necessarily control the organizations they fund? That has certainly been the contention of those who truck in conspiracy theories about the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations funding liberal and neo-liberal organizations. As for the rightwing, journalists such as Joe Conason and Gene Lyons uncovered that the "vast right wing conspiracy" -- or the New Right network of think tanks, media outlets and pressure groups -- was marshalled under rightwing billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife for his Get-Clinton campaign. Prior to the work of Conason and Lyons, Russ Bellant extensively documented in "The Coors Connection" how the Coors Family, Scaife and other wealthy rightwingers have funded the New Right movement since the early '70's. Among these rightwing benefactors are the Koch brothers. But the Kochs have been working both sides of the fence. As Bill Berkowitz writes, the Koch brothers have also been funding the Democratic Leadership Council.
According to SourceWatch, a project of the Center for Media & Democracy, the brothers are "leading contributors to the Koch family foundations, which supports a network of Conservative organizations and think tanks, including Citizens for a Sound Economy, the Manhattan Institute the Heartland Institute, and the Democratic Leadership Council."
Charles Koch co-founded the Cato Institute in 1977, while David helped launch Citizens for a Sound Economy in 1986.
This is no less stunning than if Scaife or the Coors family were funding the DLC. So do the Kochs just throw money at the DLC -
benny05
(5,322 posts)Our vets. He's been on the Senate Veteran Affairs committee for years. When vets were having to wait so long for their care, Bernie worked across the aisle to get bills passed and appropriated.
That will be important for the General Election.
Tom Rinaldo
(22,913 posts)to becoming Commander in Chief. It informs one of the true costs of war.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)Unlike some other Bush rather famously assisted by a certain sister in law by another mother.
Cal33
(7,018 posts)Tom Rinaldo
(22,913 posts)Sanders can more than hold his own on that front against anyone. Clinton wants to scare people into thinking he can't, but history supports Sanders. He is strongest in the areas that the American public always prioritizes AND has solid credentials on foreign policy.
hedda_foil
(16,375 posts)All but Obama were governors. Carter probably saw some of the world when he was in the Navy., but shore leave doesn't correspond to foreign policy. Clinton saw him some Europe when he was a Rhodes Scholar ... including Russia. Reagan might have been thinking of the good old days when he played Rick in Casablanca. (He was always confusing what really happened with what happened in the movies.) Obama didn't have any fps experience but the world loved him so much after Bushncheney® that they gave him a Nobel out of sheer relief.