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Bernie Sanders — Halfway There?
Bernie Sanders — Halfway There?
August 14, 2015
by Michael Bremmer
This editorial first appeared at Sic Semper Tyrannis.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders meeting Iowans after his speech at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, on June 12, 2015. (Photo by John Pemble / Flickr CC 2.0)
The “experts,” in their typical blinkered way, overlooked or grossly underestimated some stark truths.
...
What Sanders has done is to establish himself as a force in the Democratic Party’s selection process. He has done so by demonstrating two qualities that have largely disappeared from America’s political life over the past few decades. One is conviction and intellectual honesty. The other is articulate statement of a progressive creed that was the party’s heart and soul when it dominated the country’s electoral life, before lapsing into the “me-too” wing of our current Establishment uniparty. Sanders, thereby, has flinted a spark of life into those nominally liberal circles whose lazy and complacent inertia had led them to declare the compromised Hillary Clinton as their latest champion.
None of this was foreseen by the commentators and strategists who set the tone for our political discourse. Their domination of the electronic airways generates the Washington Consensus that few dare dispute. That consensus is invariably wrong – on almost every matter of electoral and policy consequences. They boast a record of unrelieved obtuseness that does nothing to undermine their authority in delimiting what or who qualifies for “serious” discussion. One could amass a fortune simply by betting against the Washington Consensus. A quicker and more socially responsible alternative to joining in the corrupt shenanigans that pass for finance these days.
The “experts,” in their typical blinkered way, overlooked or grossly underestimated some stark truths. Most Americans are poorer today than they were 45 years ago. Stagnant salaries may have left them on a par with or very slightly ahead of where they were in 1970 in absolute terms, but they have lost all purchase on the kind of lives led by those who are infinitely better off in relative terms. In America’s status society where well-being is measured in lifestyle terms, that counts for a lot. Especially so, when the outlook for your children is a struggle even to keep up with their parents. Moreover, tens of millions of earnest workers have seen themselves degraded and downgraded as “temps” and part-timers, shorn of job security and benefits, in the name of “productivity” and “efficiency.” They are marooned in a limbo just a layer above migrant agricultural workers. This is taken by their leaders to be the inescapable price to pay in order to keep up with the Malaysians and the Chinese. Democratic President Barack Obama rubs their noses in it by promoting the Trans-Pacific commercial Pact, largely written by big business, which will undercut the authority of the United States government to alleviate their condition.
...
Another overlooked truth is that it is finally dawning on some Americans how misled and ill-served they are by self-absorbed, careerist politicos. They have suffered from two kinds of abusive behavior: the perversion of our public institutions, legislative and executive and regulatory, by the onslaught of moneyed interests; and the calculated stratagems designed to keep the populace distracted and ill-informed through distortion and misrepresentation. These features of American democracy are not entirely new, of course. However, in the past they were offset by party competition wherein one party — the Democrats for the past century — felt an interest at once principled and electoral to expose and denounce at least a segment of these schemes and machinations, at least the domestic ones. That no longer in the case. The Democratic Party has sold out — with a few exceptions — on most significant issues.
...
http://billmoyers.com/2015/08/14/bernie-sanders-halfway-there/
August 14, 2015
by Michael Bremmer
This editorial first appeared at Sic Semper Tyrannis.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders meeting Iowans after his speech at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, on June 12, 2015. (Photo by John Pemble / Flickr CC 2.0)
The “experts,” in their typical blinkered way, overlooked or grossly underestimated some stark truths.
...
What Sanders has done is to establish himself as a force in the Democratic Party’s selection process. He has done so by demonstrating two qualities that have largely disappeared from America’s political life over the past few decades. One is conviction and intellectual honesty. The other is articulate statement of a progressive creed that was the party’s heart and soul when it dominated the country’s electoral life, before lapsing into the “me-too” wing of our current Establishment uniparty. Sanders, thereby, has flinted a spark of life into those nominally liberal circles whose lazy and complacent inertia had led them to declare the compromised Hillary Clinton as their latest champion.
None of this was foreseen by the commentators and strategists who set the tone for our political discourse. Their domination of the electronic airways generates the Washington Consensus that few dare dispute. That consensus is invariably wrong – on almost every matter of electoral and policy consequences. They boast a record of unrelieved obtuseness that does nothing to undermine their authority in delimiting what or who qualifies for “serious” discussion. One could amass a fortune simply by betting against the Washington Consensus. A quicker and more socially responsible alternative to joining in the corrupt shenanigans that pass for finance these days.
The “experts,” in their typical blinkered way, overlooked or grossly underestimated some stark truths. Most Americans are poorer today than they were 45 years ago. Stagnant salaries may have left them on a par with or very slightly ahead of where they were in 1970 in absolute terms, but they have lost all purchase on the kind of lives led by those who are infinitely better off in relative terms. In America’s status society where well-being is measured in lifestyle terms, that counts for a lot. Especially so, when the outlook for your children is a struggle even to keep up with their parents. Moreover, tens of millions of earnest workers have seen themselves degraded and downgraded as “temps” and part-timers, shorn of job security and benefits, in the name of “productivity” and “efficiency.” They are marooned in a limbo just a layer above migrant agricultural workers. This is taken by their leaders to be the inescapable price to pay in order to keep up with the Malaysians and the Chinese. Democratic President Barack Obama rubs their noses in it by promoting the Trans-Pacific commercial Pact, largely written by big business, which will undercut the authority of the United States government to alleviate their condition.
...
Another overlooked truth is that it is finally dawning on some Americans how misled and ill-served they are by self-absorbed, careerist politicos. They have suffered from two kinds of abusive behavior: the perversion of our public institutions, legislative and executive and regulatory, by the onslaught of moneyed interests; and the calculated stratagems designed to keep the populace distracted and ill-informed through distortion and misrepresentation. These features of American democracy are not entirely new, of course. However, in the past they were offset by party competition wherein one party — the Democrats for the past century — felt an interest at once principled and electoral to expose and denounce at least a segment of these schemes and machinations, at least the domestic ones. That no longer in the case. The Democratic Party has sold out — with a few exceptions — on most significant issues.
...
http://billmoyers.com/2015/08/14/bernie-sanders-halfway-there/
It goes on. Interesting article.
8 replies
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