Bernie Sanders isn’t extreme

[n2doc]

By Jon Green:

I’ve touched on this point a couple of times, but in light of this positively bonkers editorial from the Washington Post I think it deserves a full hearing: Bernie Sanders isn’t extreme.

In the editorial, the Post argues that Sanders is so extreme that he comes full circle to the point at which he is actually kinda conservative. Calling his easily-verifiable claim that economic inequality is at historic levels “hyperbolic,” it then argues that Sanders’s broad-based social programs — debt-free college, paid family leave, etc. — aren’t actually progressive because they don’t exclude people who are reasonably well-off. How can Sanders be a progressive, they ask, if a single dollar of additional government spending is used to benefit someone who isn’t already destitute?

In their frame, Sanders cares so much about spending $18 TRILLION dollars (yes, they cited the Wall Street Journal’s widely-discredited accounting of the policies he’s endorsed) that he doesn’t care where the money goes. To them, Sanders is the worst kind of extreme — extreme for the sake of extremity.

This, along with the rest of the claims made both by journalists and politicians across the political spectrum that Sanders resides two standard deviations away from our ideological norm, is bunk. Sanders’s positions may place him in the left wing of the Democratic Party, but that left wing of the Democratic Party is less extreme than nearly the entire field of Republican presidential candidates while being squarely in line with public opinion. There are three big reasons why…

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http://americablog.com/2015/09/bernie-sanders-isnt-extreme.html

[daleanime]

1. They don't know why they dislike him....

they just know that they don't like him.


The fact that they're paid to do so doesn't even enter into the conversation.

[Demeter]

2. Actually, he's totally awesome

as the Millennials would say.

And so is his campaign.

Rumor has it that Trump is taking the electorate for a ride--that he's not "seriously" campaigning or building the infrastructure to support a real campaign.

I'm of two minds:

1) does one really need all that infrastructure? It doesn't seem to be doing Hillary a bit of good.

2) Bernie's got the structure-it's spontaneously generating from the public support he's generated. Doesn't appear to be happening for Trump.

Of course, Bernie's momentum is building upon several progressive grassroots groups (intentionally or not, probably not): like Occupy and less national efforts, and social media is being vigorously exploited for him. The police brutality publicity doesn't hurt him, either. Bernie is the biggest crest on a wave of reform and revolt that started with W (if not earlier) and has continued to grow in the face of the throwing of progressive ideas and people under the Obama bus. Ed Snowden is another contributing factor--the government has been caught with its Constitutional pants down, pissing on the public, and ordinary people are enraged.

"May you live in interesting times!" Well, we certainly do!

[lostnfound]

3. This wealth distribution graph is what's extreme!!

I would love to see what America looked like on this type of graph 40 or 50 years ago.

I bet it was close to the second bar. Frankly, I don't have a huge problem with the second bar, because then there's enough money circulating among consumers in the top half that the bottom half has opportunity. With a decent social safety net, and access to reasonable education, it's probably dispersed enough to allow America to be America.
The way it is now, 80% of the population is either in poverty or a breath away from it.

[Enthusiast]

4. That's why Bernie is actually a centrist.