As Bernie Sander’s presidential campaign continues to push ahead, the candidate has also been drawing more scrutiny.
Here are several recent stories that caught my eye.
Boston Globe, “Bernie Sanders doesn’t get how politics works,” Michael A. Cohen.
I’m sorry, but that [Sanders view that money is the root evil in the political system] is a maddeningly simplistic — and wrong — explanation of how American politics works.
Take single-payer health care, which Sanders claims has been difficult to enact because of a corrupt campaign finance system that allows the “pharmaceutical industry” and private insurance companies to spend millions in “campaign contributions and lobbying.”
On the one hand, Sanders is right — those are powerful interests. But so are doctors and hospitals, who’d pay a huge price if single payer became law; so are Republicans, who fought tooth and nail to defeat Obamacare and would do the same for a single-payer plan; so are Democrats, who couldn’t even support a public option for Obamacare and are unlikely to support single payer; so are Americans, who may not be inclined to support another restructuring of the health care system — a few years after the last one. It’s not just about money; it’s also about a political system constructed and reinforced to block the kind of massive reform Sanders is advocating. Money is important, but it’s not even close to the whole story.
City Pulse, “The trouble with Bernie,” Mickey Hirten.
I followed him carefully when I was editor of the Burlington Free Press in Vermont. Sanders was the state’s sole congressman, lived in Burlington, and would periodically visit with the newspaper’s editors and publisher.
Considering that the Free Press’ editorial positions were very liberal, reflecting the nature of a very liberal Vermont community, one might think that meetings with Sanders were cordial, even celebratory.
They weren’t. Sanders was always full of himself: pious, self-righteous and utterly humorless. Burdened by the cross of his socialist crusade, he was a scold whose counter-culture moralizing appealed to the state’s liberal sensibilities as well as its conservatives, who embraced his gun ownership stance, his defense of individual rights, an antipathy toward big corporations and, generally speaking, his stick-it-to-them approach to politics.
Seven Days, “Anger Management: Sanders Fights for Employees, Except His Own,” Paul Heintz.
According to some who have worked closely with Sanders over the years, “grumpy grandpa” doesn’t even begin to describe it. They characterize the senator as rude, short-tempered and, occasionally, downright hostile. Though Sanders has spent much of his life fighting for working Vermonters, they say he mistreats the people working for him.
“As a supervisor, he was unbelievably abusive,” says one former campaign staffer, who claims to have endured frequent verbal assaults. The double standard was clear: “He did things that, if he found out that another supervisor was doing in a workplace, he would go after them. You can’t treat employees that way.”
Like several others quoted in this column, the campaign worker would speak only on the condition of anonymity, saying that to do otherwise would constitute “career suicide” in a small state such as Vermont. But others echoed the former employee’s story, saying the senator is prone to fits of anger.
The Intercept, “Dissent on Israel not permitted at Bernie Sanders Event,” Murtaza Hussain.
To a certain extent, the episode reflects an underlying tension between Sanders’ base of young progressives and his comparatively friendly posture toward Israel. A 2014 Pew Research Center poll found minority and millennial Democrats markedly more critical of Israeli military actions. At a town hall event last August, Sanders lost his temper with supporters who had interrupted him to question him about U.S. support for Israel, telling them to “shut up,” and attempting to change the subject to ISIS. During Israel’s 2014 military campaign against the Gaza Strip a plurality of Democrats described the action as “unjustified,” while Sanders was part of the unanimous Senate consent supporting Israel’s actions. He has continued to defend the “Protective Edge” operation as a legitimate act of self-defense, albeit one in which Israel “overreacted.”
The New Yorker, “Bernie Sanders and the Realists,” by John Cassidy.
In a debate where one of Sanders’s most important goals was to fire up his supporters in the early primary states, his was a good answer. However, if he wins Iowa and New Hampshire, it will no longer suffice. In seeking to make the transition from a popular protest candidate to one with a realistic—that word again—chance of winning the nomination, he will be forced to get more specific and to defend his policy proposals.
It’s also worth looking at the collection of stories by Seven Days, an alternative voice in Vermont, which has pulled together its coverage of Sanders over the years, as well as coverage of the current campaign.
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Getting your HRC on today, Ian?
Why bother supporting Hillary at this point? Her campaign is sinking under the weight of her mishandled emails. In particular, the messages containing SAP info, which goes beyond top secret classification. If she gets indicted, game over for campaign. If Obama’s lackeys at the DOJ declines to persecute her despite the evidence, her campaign will die a more slow, agonizing death with the political fallout. (Ted Kennedy’s admirers know that feeling all too well after Chappaquiddick). Obama and Loretta Lynch would look ridiculous saying that Edward Snowden deserves to face the music, while HRC does not. Already, the Clinton’s decking pol numbers show the rot is already settin in.
Bernie supporters tend to be equally stubborn, uninformed, desperate, frustrated, dismissive and emotional as Trump supporters. Left meets Right. Up meets Down. Dumb meets Dumbest. Good luck!!!
Donald Trump boasted Saturday that support for his presidential campaign would not decline even if he shot someone in the middle of a crowded street.
“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters,” Trump said at a campaign rally here.
‘t’
TRump gets his jollies on by talking about standing up and shooting a stranger as part of his campaign schtick (for the position of President of the United States, and presumptive leader of the free world, by the way), and his people go wild with glee. And you compare them to…Sanders’ supporters? Seriously?
Wow wow wow.
‘Johnson’
yes, i compare Bernie supporters with Trump supporters. try not have a seizure.
Comparing Bernie supports to Trump’s? Hmmm.
Johnson’s health and state of mind is not the one I would be concerned about.
yes, i compare Bernie supporters with Trump supporters. try not to be too anal. being closed-minded will never help you.
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/trump-sanders-spar-over-similarities
http://reason.com/archives/2015/08/10/bernie-sanders-and-donald-trump-ties
I can use Google as well to find articles that state the opposite of your, “t.”
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/stop-comparing-donald-trump-and-bernie-sanders/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-sanders-tap-voter-frustrations-but-supporters-see-few-similarities/2016/01/11/0866059e-b885-11e5-829c-26ffb874a18d_story.html
As I said before, for someone who earlier claimed “not to like Hillary,” you’re sure going out of your way to reply to nearly every comment that is pro-Bernie or anti-Hillary as of late. Sort of reflects the problem with Hillary’s eroding support base; lack of enthusiasm. If Clintonites are reluctant/ashamed to reveal their loyalties to others, it says a lot about why HRC’s once-inevitable campaign is now anything but.
Bleh. Count me in as a perpetual hater of election season.
Best to give elections more attention when we’re down to the actual versus hypothetical choices since the process to get that far is retched.
The theatrics that come with elections are a huge time suck but perhaps that’s what’s needed to steal the audience’s attention away from Caitlin and the Kardashians.
The Post’s View
Bernie Sanders’s fiction-filled campaign
January 27 at 7:57 PM
SEN. BERNIE Sanders (I-Vt.) is leading in New Hampshire and within striking distance in Iowa, in large part because he is playing the role of uncorrupted anti-establishment crusader. But Mr. Sanders is not a brave truth-teller. He is a politician selling his own brand of fiction to a slice of the country that eagerly wants to buy it.
Mr. Sanders’s tale starts with the bad guys: Wall Street and corporate money. The existence of large banks and lax campaign finance laws explains why working Americans are not thriving, he says, and why the progressive agenda has not advanced. Here is a reality check: Wall Street has already undergone a round of reform, significantly reducing the risks big banks pose to the financial system. The evolution and structure of the world economy, not mere corporate deck-stacking, explained many of the big economic challenges the country still faces. And even with radical campaign finance reform, many Americans and their representatives would still oppose the Sanders agenda.
Mr. Sanders’s story continues with fantastical claims about how he would make the European social model work in the United States. He admits that he would have to raise taxes on the middle class in order to pay for his universal, Medicare-for-all health-care plan, and he promises massive savings on health-care costs that would translate into generous benefits for ordinary people, putting them well ahead, on net. But he does not adequately explain where those massive savings would come from. Getting rid of corporate advertising and overhead would only yield so much. Savings would also have to come from slashing payments to doctors and hospitals and denying benefits that people want…………………….
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bernie-sanderss-fiction-filled-campaign/2016/01/27/cd1b2866-c478-11e5-9693-933a4d31bcc8_story.html?tid=pm_opinions_pop_b
DEAL. WITH. IT.
t
How similar are Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders? They are both populists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populism
What is missing from this definition is the anti-elitist sentiment that underlies populism, as well as the nationalism that opposes one people against another.
One can get a glimpse of these facets of populism from the following article, “Donald Trump’s Strongest Supporters: A Certain Kind of Democrat”.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/31/upshot/donald-trumps-strongest-supporters-a-certain-kind-of-democrat.html?_r=0
The article not only notes that Trump’s appeal is populist, but points out that there are different kinds of populism, as illustrated by geographic breakdown (see the maps). The populist candidate in the 1992 presidential race was the billionaire Ross Perot (Reform Party) who did well in the western US and in New England; this is just the converse of Trump’s geographic profile. Trump’s appeal seems to be based on xenophobia (rampant on the east coast and the South). In contrast, Bernie Sanders trades on class resentment (western US and New England).
http://i.imgur.com/Xqoh5jU.jpg
The implication of the article is that Donald Trump may not only be undermining the Republican Party (some say deliberately), but he can also potentially undermine the Democratic Party by wooing over its least educated members to the Republican Party. But on the east coast, that process has been at work since the 1970s, when the Nixon campaign targeted white Southerners and northern Catholics, two pillars of the Democratic Party, as potential Republicans.
http://americamagazine.org/content/all-things/remembering-nixons-catholic-coup-interview-pat-buchanan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
So Trump and Sanders both have a populist appeal, but these are two different kinds of populism with two different audiences in the US.
More on the similarities and differences between the supporters of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/us/bernie-sanders-and-donald-trump-voters-share-anger-but-direct-it-differently.html?ref=politics&_r=0
Read the whole article in the NY Times.
For the first 50 years of US history, American presidential candidates were nominated by Congress, not by conventions or primaries. “The Congressional nominating caucus is the name for informal meetings in which American congressmen would agree on who to nominate for the Presidency and Vice Presidency from their political party.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_nominating_caucus
This changed in the 1820s, with the creation of party conventions that would determine who would be the candidates. This shifted power away from Congressional insiders and toward party insiders.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_nominating_convention
In the 1960s, the conventions were themselves largely bypassed by the empowerment of the primary system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_primary#History
This would seem to represent an evolution towards greater democratization of the electoral process.
But be careful what you ask for. Maybe there were good reasons why the {begin cliché} “Founding Fathers, in all their wisdom,” {end cliché} restricted the nominating process to Congress in the first place.
Without the rise of the importance of the primary system since the 1970s, it is unlikely that outsiders like Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush (yes, even though he is a Bush) and Barack Obama would have gotten elected. Congressional and party insiders would consider it ridiculous to have these relatively unknown men in office (men with fundamental and massive flaws that the insiders know about but of which voters are blissfully, stubbornly oblivious). Voters don’t want to elect just another professional politician, so we end up with Presidents who 1) spent most of their years in office just trying to figure out the basics of public policy and how to run things, and 2) eventually turn out to be professional politicians (con artists) anyway. All this democratization started with Andrew Jackson’s presidential run, and now it culminates in the rise of serious candidates who, like Jackson, scapegoat banks and demonize foreigners.
An article on which states Cruz, Trump and Rubio need to win – and when:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/02/02/us/cruz-trump-rubio-nomination-paths.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=g-artboard%20&module=span-abc-region®ion=span-abc-region&WT.nav=span-abc-region
The primary season kicks off in the most conservative states. From February 1st to March 15th, this is when the most conservative candidates like Ted Cruz will thrive. From that point until the end of April, primaries will take place in states that are best described as “somewhat conservative”, which is where Trump will have the upper hand, supposedly. After that, primaries will take place in more moderate states (moderate for Republicans, that is, but probably more liberal generally), where it is expected that Rubio will do best.
On the one hand, the purpose of primaries is to slowly weed out the less popular candidates. But the current schedule of states initially favors the most conservative candidates, presumably giving them all sorts of momentum, air time and funding. That would seem to hurt the moderates most of all. Favoring extremists early on might not be good for the overall American political system. It also might not be good for the Republican Party’s chances of getting its candidates elected because only one-quarter of the electorate identifies itself as conservative (and might be only moderately conservative for the most part).
On the other hand, by frontloading the most conservative states early on and leaving the moderate states in the last stretch of the race, moderates are given the final word, so to speak. There is a gradual shift throughout the primaries toward more moderate Republicans, leaving guys like Cruz in the dustbin of history. But this is putting a positive spin on a process that seems random and is perhaps dysfunctional. (I just learned that the primaries are structured this way, and am somewhat dismayed by this.)