The 6 biggest policy differences between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton

[eridani]

http://www.vox.com/2015/5/1/8530439/bernie-sanders-hillary-differences

1) Money: Sanders attacks the rich; Clinton wants to raise money from them

Clinton wants to win the support of the wealthy and corporations to her side. Sanders wants to attack them and try to break their power. As Dylan Matthews wrote, the top organizations whose employees give to Sanders are overwhelmingly unions — while for Clinton they're mostly banks and corporations. That fundamental difference in approach would almost certainly continue on from their campaigns to their administrations.

2) Trade: Sanders is extremely skeptical of new agreements, while Clinton has waffled

Trade is an issue on which the personal preferences of the president make a huge difference, regardless of who controls Congress. Since trade agreements are negotiated by the executive branch, a president can either choose to pursue new ones, or put them on hold entirely.

3) Foreign policy: Clinton is more of a hawk than Sanders — and most other Democrats

On foreign policy issues involving the use of American force abroad, it's actually Clinton, not Sanders, who's most out of step with the Democratic Party. And since the president has broad authority to conduct foreign policy without Congressional oversight, this matters quite a bit. "It's very clear that a President Clinton would bring far more hawkish instincts to bear on global problems than the current president — or, for that matter, your average Democratic voter," Zack Beauchamp wrote earlier this year.

5) Spending: Sanders wants big spending

Most Democrats would love to increase federal spending on their favorite policy priorities. But mainstream politicians in the party have recently tended to embrace messaging about fiscal discipline. Clinton — wary of being tarred as a big-spending Democrat, like her husband was in the beginning of his administration — is one of them, generally proposing that increases in spending would be paid for by other spending cuts or tax hikes.

[delrem]

1. I think the big question for Sanders is how he can bring this about.

The entire process in the US is extremely right wing.
By that I mean that the US favors investment capital more than anything, the US creates infrastructures favorable to investment capital at every opportunity, and this has created a right wing war economy having near infinite power.

Impenetrable.

Opinion surveys across the world show that the US isn't considered to be a peace keeper.
It is considered rogue.

[djean111]

2. I would rather have a president who is fighting against those things than a president who is

actually quite on board with those things.

[Hydra]

4. I would say he couldn't

But there are 2 trump cards in play against the MIC- capitalism is failing and climate change is probably too far along to stop.

They're running out of gas, figuratively and literally. If they were smart, they'd let Bernie play FDR to save their bacon for another day...but if they won't let someone save the dying system, we may be able to build a better one if we aren't screwn already.

The ball is in their court.

[JDPriestly]

5. Our country changes from very conservative to poulist in a matter of a few years.

The election of Obama signaled the desire of the American people to move left.

We will probably always be a relatively moderate country. We will never be an extreme-left nation, but our society has changed repeatedly and, thanks to our democratic form of government, we change our policies and our government, we change from left to right and right to left in order to solve our problems.

Right now, extreme income inequality is a big problem as are racism and the degradation of the environment. When our nation was founded, our citizens pressed to move to the Midwest and then the West so that they could own land, farm, set up towns and provide for their lives.

The 19th century brought the industrial revolution. We remained mostly an agrarian society, but we began to form towns and linked them with railroads. Railroads helped us move produce from the farms to growing urban areas. The Civil War ended slavery and marked the beginning of the close of an agrarian era that used human labor that lived at subsistence levels. The Gilded Age made the development of new technologies and industry possible but it brought right-wing governments and tough time for labor.

The populist movement at the end of the 19th century brought reform including laws that were intended to prevent monopolies, laws about child labor and working hours. Unions began to form. After WWI, which we won, came the 1920s, the emphasis was again on investment and commercial development and lots of new technologies and then there was the crash of 1929.

That was followed by another populist movement led by FDR that culminated in Kennedy and LBJ. LBJ brought us Medicare and other social programs that we enjoy today.

In 1968, Nixon took over and gradually, after Jimmy Carter, we had the Reagan revolution, a move toward conservative, right-wing government.

We now have a new economic era -- computers and trade have resulted in fewer jobs, lower pay for people, still a fairly good living standard for most people but the prosperity has not spread fairly across our society, and we have neglected our public sector.

The trust in government and the public sector that granted land to railroads and settlers for the development of our country, that built sewers and roads and dams and established parks has been weak since about 1980.

But if you talk to young people in America today, it becomes clear that the confidence in the public sector that made our country so great -- as we first settled, as we moved West, as we fought and won wars (something we have not done for a long time -- really win a war) is returning.

2016 could well be the year in which we return to a more populist view and a government that works for all of us, not just the richest few. Hard to tell, but populist reform will come. It's just a question of when.

[Enthusiast]

10. Nice post, JD.

Go, Bernie!

[bbgrunt]

3. #4?

[JDPriestly]

6. Health reform. Read the whole article at the link.

[eridani]

7. We are supposed to only use 4 paragraphs of material from cited URLs n/t

[bbgrunt]

8. ah! I'm a bit blind tonight and missed the link. thanks.

[Doctor_J]

9. Or, in brief,

Clinton is practically a republican, Sanders wants to fight republicans with all of his might

[MisterP]

11. RepublicanISM, more precisely: the neolibs always bring out the fire and brimstone

for the elections, ranting and raving about how the fascists are gonna put us all in camps with their policies, which said Dems set about enacting the morning after winning