General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: How many women here are Bernie supporters? [View all]tblue37
(65,734 posts)banks, and even though I cringe at many of the choices she has made while holding up her finger to test the direction of the political winds, I also admire her in many ways, and I will of course vote for her if she is our nominee.
But I think Bernie's run is our best hope for forcing discussion of the real issues--and for pushing the Democratic leadership back toward our party's actual principles. In terms of adherence to the supposed principles of the Democratic Party, he is the only true Democrat running right now, even though he isn't officially a Democrat.
I do have a problem, though, with the idea of Bernie as our nominee and as president--well, not with Bernie, but with the country and with the way our political system works. Both the Repubs and the Dems did everything they could to kneecap Carter when he was president, because they saw him as an outsider, and they did prevent him from being effective in office. Bernie, despite his years in Congress, is also an "outsider." He doesn't toe the line or play ball with the corporate sellouts in both parties, so I worry that even if he does get the nomination, the Democratic Party's powerful establishment will not support him adequately in the election, and that even if he wins the office, neither party will work with him to enact his agenda.
The Republican Party has deliberately undercut Obama, but he hasn't gotten all that much help from most of the Dems in Congress, either. I am impressed that he has managed to accomplish as much as he has while facing such outrageous obstructionism, but without the support of either the Republicans or many of the Democrats, he hasn't been able to accomplish as much as we hoped he would.
I think that if the American people who wanted more progressive policies had realized that they have more to do than just voting in presidential elections, then Obama would have had many more policy successes, and his successes would have been much more progressive than they have been. Our chance to get universal, single-payer health care, for example, was screwed up by people like Max Baucus, Joe Lieberman, and Nebraska's Ben Nelson, holdouts who were supposedly on our side. Despite the claims made by so many since then, Obama never did have a true 60-vote majority in the Senate--not just because of Kennedy's illness, but also because of the delay in seating Franken and because of the destructive behavior of corporatist Dems like Baucus, Lieberman, and Nelson. But if there were more Democrats in the House and Senate, then the Republicans would be less able to obstruct progressive policies that the American people overwhelmingly support.
Unfortunately, Dems and liberals in general just don't bother to mobilize or turn out for midterm elections, so the Repubs not only captured Congress in 2010, and then the Senate last year, but also a lot of state legislatures and governorships. That gave them the power to gerrymander districts to ensure that they win more seats even when the Dems win a lot more votes, and it also has enabled them to enact all sorts of voter suppression laws to cheat us in future elections, as well as enacting the far right's anti-woman, anti-immigrant, and anti-minority agenda.
If Bernie wins, we have to have his back, in a way that liberal voters have not had Obama's back--and did not have Carter's back. We need to mobilize voters to put Dems in the House and Senate, in governorships, and in state legislatures, both in 2016 and also in 2018!
AND we have to pressure officeholders the way the Republicans do. The Republican base makes noise; Republican voters don't allow their elected officials to ignore or insult them.
Although there are far more people in this country who want progressive policies, most of them don't bother to do anything but vote for president every four years. That simply has to change, because if it doesn't, even electing Bernie isn't going to do much for us.