The question Bernie never answers: how does he expect to get anything done?

[pnwmom]

We're less than 10 months from the General election. There's no sign that we'll have wholesale change in the House, so it will remain controlled by the Republicans. There is a chance we could possibly retake the Senate, but we won't have a filibuster-proof majority there.

So how does Bernie expect to follow through on his promises? He's the person who says that real change only happens from the bottom, not from the top. So how does he think a revolutionary new Democrat at the top will succeed without strong support in Congress?

We know how Hillary or Martin would proceed -- through deal making and compromise. Bernie has no background or interest in either.

So how is he going to accomplish anything significant? Unless he starts acting like the kind of politicians he despises?

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/bernie-sanders-answer/story?id=36499530

At almost every one of his town halls around the country, someone in the audience asks the Vermont senator a question centered on that idea: How will he get it all done? Many of them bring up the big ambitions that President Obama had when he ran. How could Sanders, with campaign promises even more progressive than Obama’s, accomplish what the president could not?

“How realistic do you think this is to get all of this done?” Devyn Harris, for example, asked the senator in Hooksett, New Hampshire, on Thursday. “You are fighting against a Republican-controlled Congress.”

Sanders often cuts the questioner short, just slightly, like he did to Harris, once he realizes the thrust of their inquiry. He knows his answer on this topic, it always the same and it goes something like this:

“If you know history you know that nothing ever changes from the top on down, it is always from the bottom on up,” he began in Hooksett. “If we were sitting here 20 years ago and someone jumped up and said you know I think that gay marriage will be legal in every state in this country, the response would have been, ‘What are you smoking?’ Today, gay marriage is legal and for many young people it is not even an issue any more."

[tazkcmo]

1. Enemy Number One

“In addition to the NRA, the health insurance companies, the drug companies, the Iranians… probably the Republicans,” said Hillary Clinton.

So how will Hillary get anything done? By negotiating with Enemy Number One?

[arcane1]

7. Nobody ever wants to answer that. For obvious reasons.

It's a made-up, Sanders-only bullshit claim.

[pnwmom]

15. That remark was a mistake,but it doesn't take away from the fact that she

has made deals with and compromised with Republicans before, and that is why Bernie criticizes her.

[Bluenorthwest]

2. How has Obama gotten things past the Republicans? How would Hillary?

It's easy to say 'compromise and deal' and also easy to say Bernie has no interest but neither thing amounts to more than typing. It's just as easy for me to type that this overriding desire on Hillary's part to make nice with Republicans has caused most of her largest mistakes such as Iraq and informed her now infamous resistance to marriage equality lasting long past that of even most of her moderate centrist prayer circle. It's easy to say Bernie never opposes the rights of others or rushes to war in order to make across the aisle theater. I'm not at all sure that promising to compromise with Republicans is a huge comfort out of someone who has been so often in agreement with Republicans. Faced with another war, she's sure have their support, well earned on her part. Is that a good thing?

Would she compromise on LGBT issues? How about on reproductive choice? If she's all about this deal making in ways Bernie would never do, are those things up for compromise? Social Security? How about that? Are there no limits?

Many people think Obama burned too much time in his seeking of compromises that Republicans were just not willing to make. Also he burned much trust among Democrats. Have the Republicans met him half way or even given him basic respect? No they have not. So more of that it is a great idea? More years of hearing about how she's from Kenya while she says 'my friends let's compromise'?

Yawn.

[arcane1]

3. How many PROGRESSIVE policies can you name that Clinton can get done, but Sanders can't?

They will both face the same congress, one that objects to anything even remotely progressive.

I look forward to your lengthy list.

[Beacool]

4. In other words, it ain't happening in his lifetime.

[Jim Lane]

11. It will happen just as quickly as Hillary's repeal of the Hyde Amendment.

Or her modifications of Obamacare to get more people covered.

How will President Sanders accomplish anything? He'll ask his defeated rival to identify the staffer whom she was going to assign to Congressional relations if she had won, and he'll hire that person.

[snagglepuss]

5. Bernie has always been straight out about that. In the first speech I heard

him give he stated in no uncertain terms that he can't do it alone but needs a movement behind him.

[pnwmom]

16. So where is the movement that will change the Congress? Bernie isn't helping

to raise any money for those elections. How does he think it will happen?

[Motown_Johnny]

6. He always answers that question. Many people just can't grasp the concept.

Expand the electorate. Bring more voters into the process. Work with the mandate of the expanded pool of voters.




The question Clinton supporters never answer. How will she get anything progressive done? We know how she will get the things done that the Pukes want done. Isn't that worse than getting nothing done?

[Broward]

8. For starters, why would any Dem want more compromise with the Repubs?

Look where that's gotten us. At a minimum, a Bernie presidency would stop the rightward slide of the Dem Party and reframe the debate. Of course, it will be difficult to get any meaningful progressive legislation through Congress, but you have to play the long game.

[Bluenorthwest]

9. If you never start out you never get there. Someday maybe this bigoted country will manage to pass

the Equality Act or ENDA. When that eventually happens it will be because two Democrats of great foresight started introducing such legislation in 1974 when it had very little chance of passing and others have advanced it again and again in the face of unbending Republican and conservative Democratic obstruction. Congress after Congress, defeat after defeat we get up and do it again and we will do so until the laws of this land are made fair to all. If you don't start you can't finish, if you don't leave you can't arrive.

[jkbRN]

10. Some reading for you:

Back in 1900, people who called for women’s suffrage, laws protecting the environment and consumers, an end to lynching, the right of workers to form unions, a progressive income tax, a federal minimum wage, old-age insurance, dismantling of Jim Crow laws, the eight-hour workday, and government-subsidized health care and housing were considered impractical idealists, utopian dreamers, or dangerous socialists. Now we take these ideas for granted. The radical ideas of one generation have become the common sense of the next.

How did this happen?

Social movements transformed these (and many other) radical ideas from the margins to the mainstream, and from polemics to policy. The 20th century is a remarkable story of progressive accomplishments against overwhelming odds. But it is not a tale of steady progress. At best, it is a chronicle of taking two steps forward, then one step backward, then two more steps forward. The successful battles and social improvements came about in fits and starts. When pathbreaking laws are passed–such as the Nineteenth Amendment (which granted women suffrage in 1920), the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (which created the minimum wage), the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which outlawed many forms of racial discrimination), and the Clean Air Act of 1970–we often forget that those milestones took decades of work by activists, thinkers, and politicians.

Each generation of Americans faces a different set of economic, political, and social conditions. There are no easy formulas for challenging injustice and promoting democracy. But unless we know this history, we will have little understanding of how far we have come, how we got here, and what still needs to change to make America (and the rest of the world) more livable, humane, and democratic.

Understanding social movements requires an analysis of the battle over interests and ideas. All movements face opposition from political and/or corporate elites, grassroots counter-movements, or both. Movements win victories when they can take advantage of their opposition’s weaknesses. So, like movement organizers and strategists, we spend time in the course evaluating what resources the opposition had, how cohesive it was, and where it was vulnerable to challenge – at least vulnerable enough to have to negotiate and compromise.

Movements are usually more successful when they can persuade a significant slice of the public that their cause is just and should be supported. Thus, they have to engage in the battle of ideas to influence public opinion. I ask students to consider each movement’s key ideas and think about how activists sought to appeal to a wider audience – how, in contemporary parlance, movements “framed” their goals and demands to gain the moral high ground.

We stand on the shoulders of earlier generations of reformers, radicals, and idealists who challenged the status quo of their day. They helped change America by organizing movements, pushing for radical reforms, popularizing progressive ideas, and spurring others to action.

Source: https://mobilizingideas.wordpress.com/2012/08/01/social-movements-how-people-make-history/

[Gregorian]

12. Putting men on the moon was harder. We did that.

[beam me up scottie]

13. Meme 23: Bernie won't be able to pass anything through a Republican controlled congress

Bernie supporter standard response:

First: Big sigh.

Any Democrat who gets elected will face the same obstructionism as Obama.

The only way Hillary would do any better than Bernie is if she caves and lets the Republicans run the show.

Bernie has worked with Dems and Pubs for decades to get legislation passed, there's no reason to think he won't be able to continue doing the same if elected.

So that's not a reason to support Hillary.

Shake head, walk away.

[Fawke Em]

14. He got more done with a Republican Congress than Obama.

And I'm sure he could get more done than Hillary.

Next talking point, please.

[KingFlorez]

17. Two words: Executive order

It would be a mess, but that's what I think how he plans on attempting to put his plans into motion.