The thing people don't get about Sanders is that pandering to constituents is still pandering. It's not that he operates to his own accord, it's that he operates to benefit those voting for him.
In fact, you could even go so far as to say that, being a politician, it's literally his job.
Yes, and Sanders has to do it more than many other politicians because he relies on the electorate for both votes and finances. He refuses to be bankrolled by private interest and SuperPACs, so losing a single donor has a much greater impact.
The thing people don't get about Sanders is that pandering to constituents is still pandering. It's not that he operates to his own accord, it's that he operates to benefit those voting for him.
In fact, you could even go so far as to say that, being a politician, it's literally his job.
Yes, and Sanders has to do it more than many other politicians because he relies on the electorate for both votes and finances. He refuses to be bankrolled by private interest and SuperPACs, so losing a single donor has a much greater impact.
That last bit is incorrect. His average donation is something like $30 Losing one or even, say, half a percent of his donating constituency at those rates isn't a huge loss. You piss off one major contributor like the oil industry and you're fuuuuucked...
I wonder if both Hillary and Sanders are waiting to do big campaign pushes until later in the game. It would be a great pull from Obama's playbook. Remember when he took out that 30 minute ad way late on the cycle?
I can understand how someone who has never had to choose between medication for a serious illness or food for their table might miss the core of what's being said in Sanders' campaign, I guess.
Back to making assumptions about the audience again?
Muppet literally thinks that we can be a Socialist wonderland in 2 years. So with that idea in his head, you are not really going to convince him that a pragmatic choice is a good call. He wants a idealist radical that he isn't even going to get from Bernie Sanders AND either way is not going to happen because of congress anyhow. Soooo because of that he's a "watch the world burn" type where he wants things to get SOOOOO bad that maybe instead of devolving into gangs of First of the North Star type tribes which is most likely, that a revolution will occur giving him the government he actually wants.
//Chance of this happening 0.0001% of a good outcome.
Complete mischaracterization and from there, the expected strawman. I've given up on this thread beyond this point. Sanders is doing pretty swell without my winning over a dozen or two people who don't understand the message because they probably have not dealt with the manner in which the American health and welfare "systems" actually work when you're basically screwed. And that's only a plank of a fairly comprehensive platform.
No, there cannot be full blown Socialism in 2 years or in 20. Clinton, though, is not even an incremental step in the right direction. She's an assertion that where we're headed is fine. Sorry, no thank you.
Sanders is saying, more or less, we need to vote out nearly all incumbents and get on with some sort of program of, if not the renewed pursuit of American exceptionalism, then at least attempting to catch up with the rest of the first world.
I can understand how someone who has never had to choose between medication for a serious illness or food for their table might miss the core of what's being said in Sanders' campaign, I guess. Otherwise, I don't get it. You think he's idealistic? Pandering? Lying? His record seems to indicate otherwise.
Well yeah. Getting into political arguments on the internet, even the most well-reasoned, is a mostly pointless drain on time and resources. From what I recall, some of the biggest participants in this argument can't even vote in this stupid endless election so their opinion is utterly irrelevant. Your time would probably be better spent on anything else other than this. Most of the people that can vote in this election probably don't live in states that matter anyway. I live in California and our primary is in June. The primary contest will probably be over by then. California will go for the Democrat in the presidential election and I live in safely Democratic congressional, assembly, and state senate districts. Whether I show up to the polls won't matter to any of the Presidential candidates one way or the other and I have a feeling that describes most of the voters in this thread.
In a representative democracy one vote can never really matter. A single individual swinging an election one way or the other shouldn't happen. And it practically never happens. However, America goes out of its way to make people feel like their vote and their voice doesn't matter. Which is largely true: https://represent.us/action/theproblem-4/
From what I recall, some of the biggest participants in this argument can't even vote in this stupid endless election so their opinion is utterly irrelevant.
Ah, American Xenophobia rears it's ugly head again. "You're not American, so your opinion is irrelevant", yeesh, what are they teaching kids in schools these days.
Well yeah. Getting into political arguments on the internet, even the most well-reasoned, is a mostly pointless drain on time and resources. From what I recall, some of the biggest participants in this argument can't even vote in this stupid endless election so their opinion is utterly irrelevant. Your time would probably be better spent on anything else other than this. Most of the people that can vote in this election probably don't live in states that matter anyway. I live in California and our primary is in June. The primary contest will probably be over by then. California will go for the Democrat in the presidential election and I live in safely Democratic congressional, assembly, and state senate districts. Whether I show up to the polls won't matter to any of the Presidential candidates one way or the other and I have a feeling that describes most of the voters in this thread.
In a representative democracy one vote can never really matter. A single individual swinging an election one way or the other shouldn't happen. And it practically never happens. However, America goes out of its way to make people feel like their vote and their voice doesn't matter. Which is largely true: https://represent.us/action/theproblem-4/
Ah, American Xenophobia rears it's ugly head again. "You're not American, so your opinion is irrelevant", yeesh, what are they teaching kids in schools these days.
Thank you for proving my point about political arguments on the Internet.
Pointing out that a person, whose main purpose in this conversation is advocating for a candidate, is probably wasting their time getting angry at people who have no role in the election that that candidate is running in is not kosher anymore? Why? What does wasting time composing posts do that literally any other hobby or political activity wouldn't be infinitely more gratifying doing? It doesn't seem fun. It isn't helping Bernie. Who is benefiting from any of this?
If any Republican were president today, ANY one of them, The ACA and Planned Parenthood would be gone.
If ANY Democrat were president, this would fail. A Democrat currently is president, so it did fail.
Any Democrat will do in the White House. Real change can only come from state legislatures and congress. The president serves solely as a tourniquet on the wound until real reform occurs elsewhere.
That's a silly argument Gomez, since well you know the US is the worlds foremost military power and economic power (still), pretty much anyone everywhere is touched by actions done by the US in some way however minor. Not to mention, if you are interested in politics as a hobby you tend to watch how it's done in other countries too.
Many of the candidates express that they would defund or disband the EPA. It's a big part of most of their platforms to heavily weaken environmental and occupational safety regulations.
Michigan has a Republican governor who, to save money, literally poisoned the entire water supply of Flint with heavy doses of lead in order to save some money. He basically ordered them to sidestep even the minimal safety regulations that ARE in place.
If any Republican wins POTUS, you can kiss the EPA goodbye.
At this point I don't pay attention to most of the GOP candidates unless polls of the general electorate give me reason to worry. I watch Rubio, Kasich, and Bush since they're the only ones who I think could take office.
Thurmond was a Democrat when he read the phone book to filibuster the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
Yeap. The "party of Lincoln" likes to pretend it's still the party of Lincoln while applauding the actual roots of its current incarnation: the Southern Democrats.
No part of that post is accurate. I haven't seen a Republican (pundit, politician, or voter) invoke Lincoln outside of direct discussion of the Civil War in years. Furthermore, the Dixiecrats did not take over the party. They joined the GOP, but their policies of expanding welfare and Great Society programs were crushed by Goldwater's beliefs around the role of the Federal government, when reincarnated in the form of Ronald Reagan. Reagan himself did start as a Democrat, but his partisan switch was based in anti-Communist beliefs. He didn't fight for Jim Crow policies. Had George Wallace become the face of the Republican party, we would be in a country that would be far more racist but also far more class conscious.
The pre-debate introduction even harped on the idea that the GOP is the "most inclusive" party in America.
The Southern Democrat populists evaporated the moment they realized that populism might include black people. Without the significant defection to the GOP of most of the Democratic party aparatus in the South, it's unlikely that the Republicans could have maintained the coalition necessary to have survived and now surged in congress, let alone the state legislatures.
We're arguing over completely different definitions of "roots" of the party. You're concerned with the individual voters, while I look at it as a form of policy and leaders. When you said that Southern Democrats are the root of the Republican party, I interpreted to say that people like George Wallace redirected the GOP, not that that Democratic voters in the South became a significant number of Republican voters.
Comments
In a representative democracy one vote can never really matter. A single individual swinging an election one way or the other shouldn't happen. And it practically never happens. However, America goes out of its way to make people feel like their vote and their voice doesn't matter. Which is largely true: https://represent.us/action/theproblem-4/
Pointing out that a person, whose main purpose in this conversation is advocating for a candidate, is probably wasting their time getting angry at people who have no role in the election that that candidate is running in is not kosher anymore? Why? What does wasting time composing posts do that literally any other hobby or political activity wouldn't be infinitely more gratifying doing? It doesn't seem fun. It isn't helping Bernie. Who is benefiting from any of this?
If ANY Democrat were president, this would fail. A Democrat currently is president, so it did fail.
Any Democrat will do in the White House. Real change can only come from state legislatures and congress. The president serves solely as a tourniquet on the wound until real reform occurs elsewhere.
I think people would be better served arguing politics with foreigners, than xenophobic, isolationist nonsense like that.
Michigan has a Republican governor who, to save money, literally poisoned the entire water supply of Flint with heavy doses of lead in order to save some money. He basically ordered them to sidestep even the minimal safety regulations that ARE in place.
If any Republican wins POTUS, you can kiss the EPA goodbye.
http://www.salon.com/2012/11/01/ohio_ad_black_people_should_vote_gop_because_lincoln_freed_the_slaves/
People like this try to argue that Lincoln would still in today's party system be a Republican:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/progressives-try-to-steal-lincoln-1428967905
Rick Perry tried real hard to sell the idea that the GOP was still the party for African American advancement:
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/07/02/why-it-s-republicans-not-democrats-who-really-offer-african-americans-hope-better-life.html
He wasn't the only one.
The pre-debate introduction even harped on the idea that the GOP is the "most inclusive" party in America.
The Southern Democrat populists evaporated the moment they realized that populism might include black people. Without the significant defection to the GOP of most of the Democratic party aparatus in the South, it's unlikely that the Republicans could have maintained the coalition necessary to have survived and now surged in congress, let alone the state legislatures.