2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumHow Bernie Sanders Would Use The Bully Pulpit
This is one of the reasons I support Bernie Sanders.
Gothmog
(145,800 posts)Sanders' plans for adopting his proposals depend on these new voters. Here is how Sanders thinks that he will be able to force the GOP to be reasonable http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/21/1483791/-Imagine-Bernie-Sanders-wins-the-White-House-Then-what
Thats a phrase Sanders uses often, but what does he mean by it? Sanders has said that if he wins the presidency, his victory will be accompanied by a huge increase in voter turnoutone that he thinks might end Republican control of Congress. But Sanders acknowledges that the House and Senate could, in spite of his best efforts, remain in GOP hands come next January.
Given that likelihood, Sanders offers an alternate means for achieving his political revolution. He says he knows that a Democratic president cant simply sit down and negotiate with Republican leaders and forge a series of compromises. Anyone who's observed the GOPs behavior over the course of Barack Obamas presidency would not dispute that, and in any event, no compromise with Republicans would ever lead to single-payer anyway.
So what then? How would a President Sanders get Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan to pass any of his big-ticket items? This is the model he proposes:
What we do is you put an issue before Congress, lets just use free tuition at public colleges and universities, and that vote is going to take place on November 8 ... whatever it may be. We tell millions and millions of people, young people and their parents, there is going to be a vote ... half the people dont know whats going on ... but we tell them when the vote is, maybe we welcome a million young people to Washington, D.C. to say hello to their members of Congress. Maybe we have the telephones and the e-mails flying all over the place so that everybody in America will know how their representative is voting. [...]
And then Republicans are going to have to make a decision. Then theyre going to have to make a decision. You know, when thousands of young people in their district are saying, You vote against this, youre out of your job, because we know whats going on. So this gets back to what a political revolution is about, is bringing people in touch with the Congress, not having that huge wall. Thats how you bring about change.
The rest of the DK article debunks that concept that Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell could be influenced by these new voters but we never get to this issue and Sanders himself admits that he will not bet elected without this revolution. So far we are not seeing any evidence of this revolution. Again, Sanders's whole campaign is based on this revolution and so it is appropriate to ask where these new voters are?
It is hard for me to take Sanders' proposals seriously including the ones you want to talk about unless and until we see some evidence of this revolution.
Again, where are these millions and millions of new voters?
jeff47
(26,549 posts)It's not like Ryan or McConnell will pass anything Clinton wants. Yet you don't seem to be bothered that the vast majority of Clinton's proposals require Congress to pass a bill.
The point of a Sanders campaign is to start driving a wedge between the perception of the parties. That should boost turnout among the very large chunk of the electorate who do not bother to vote.
The point of a Clinton campaign is to maintain this status quo where that large chunk of the electorate does not see enough of a difference to bother voting.
And before you come back with "then those voters are idiots", we need those voters to do anything. So it doesn't matter how dumb you think they are. We need to figure out how to appeal to them. And we've utterly failed to do that for the last 30 years.
dana_b
(11,546 posts)I love that he would actually OUT these assholes to their constituents and make them own their b.s.
uponit7771
(90,370 posts)Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)The DINO would rather have a sniveling corporatist who meets Paul Ryan "half way" than a tireless liberal fighter who energizes people who still think we deserve something better than the world's worst healthcare system.