The underside of Sanders' fan base:
Bernie Sanders and His Internet Army
At the start of his 2020 bid, the Vermont senator told his supporters that he condemned bullying. Is it his problem if many don’t seem to listen?
Snip: "Since the start of Mr. Sanders’s first presidential campaign in 2016, his colossal online support base has been by turns a source of peerless strength and perpetual aggravation — envied and caricatured by rivals who covet such loyalty, feared by Democrats who have faced harassment from his followers, and alternately cherished and gently scolded by the candidate himself."
"Some progressive activists who declined to back Mr. Sanders have begun traveling with private security after incurring online harassment. Several well-known feminist writers said they had received death threats. A state party chairwoman changed her phone number. A Portland lawyer saw her business rating tumble on an online review site after tussling with Sanders supporters on Twitter."
A friend says he sees Bernie and his supporters as reverse Trumpers--angry leftist blue collar workers or angry rightwing blue collar workers are equally ready to start whacking heads with baseball bats.
ReplyDeleteNot sure I have such fears about the proletariat, but both Trump and Sanders have a populist message that sometimes attracts belligerent people, regardless of socio-economic class.
The NYT doesn't seem to have problems with the hegemony of Mauerstraße or sending working class bros to die in asshole wars. So you dig up some statistically inevitable poor behaviour and paint the whole movement with it. I agree with Bernie's economics. He, unlike the NYT, did not support the Iraq war. Bernie wants to do what I want done. That's why I support him. The status quo and "the center" is baloney.
ReplyDeletePeople can hash it out in the primaries, but they need to go blue in November. Anyway that's my RINO point of view.
DeleteStanley: When reading the Times story this morning, which seemed to come out of the blue, I asked myself how much had the DNC (or its "consultants") had pressed this story by gathering complaints from people who had been criticized/attacked.
DeleteMy knowledge of fellow Bernie activists is limited. I met some people in 2016. This time around I was to the first organizational meeting here in Lake County, another meeting in Cleveland, and recently to the caucuses.
ReplyDeleteI didn't see people who were anyway different from the people that I worked with on the Obama elections, or very different from the people who supported other candidates at the caucuses.
Some Bernie supporters may act differently because they are in different situations. Some Bernie people at the 2016 convention had very positive experiences of meeting like minded people while others had confrontation experiences. One the first principles of my own discipline social psychology is the social situation explains more behavior than personality, e.g. with regard to aggression, anxiety, etc.
Sanders founded a permanent organization, Our Revolution, which has been growing since 2016, rapidly growing during these primaries, and will likely continue to grow regardless of who the Democratic candidate will be. I find the small donations strategy very appealing.
I have always had a great interest in social movements in the church as well as politics. I followed FutureChurch and Voice of the Faithful as church movements. I was active in Eugene McCarthy's campaign in 1986. On the night before the Wisconsin primary when Johnson announced he would not run, I listened with fellow students in the residence of the retired director of Yerkes observatory. We then went to the telescopes to see the moon, etc. knowing we had toppled a sitting president.
I'm trying to sort this out. I could use some help. Compare/contrast the recent op eds in the NYTimes by Paul Krugman and Elizabeth Bruenig. I don't have time to follow these issues nearly as closely as I'd like, and I don't know what conclusion to draw. Your thoughts?
ReplyDeleteSince not everyone has access to the NYTimes website, I'm going to send both columns to the people who've participated on this thread, and to others who, for all I know, may be lurking, and threatening to participate.
My take is that neither Biden nor Sanders are saints. But neither are they horrible people. They have both been in politics a long time; they have positions which have evolved and changed over time. The best thing for them to do is just to admit this. I'd be more worried about someone who never changed.
DeleteI have to strongly disagree with Elizabeth Bruening. The last thing we need is to turn the campaign into the Hunger Games, where the last one standing, who fought the dirtiest and ugliest, is the victor.
Thanks for sending the pdf, Gene.
A large part of this case against Sanders is based on bad behaviour in the social media. So welcome to the 21st Century. Social media is rife with manipulation, false flag impersonation, divisive amplification, instant emotional overreaction. The worst part of these anti-Bernie articles is that they equate Bernie and Trump or at least Trumpers and Bernie supporters. This is ridiculous. Perhaps Bernie's big sin is admitting that there IS class warfare in the US, that there IS a working class in America and that they have been screwed royally. And that is an inconvenient truth.
Delete"Bad behavior on social media". There is this cartoon making the rounds where the devil is asking God, "Please, please, let me create something. Just one thing!" Finally God gives in. People fill in the blank with what they think that thing was. Social media would be a good candidate.
DeleteKrugman/Bruenig
DeleteI read Krugman the day it was published and I had the sad thought that Krugman, too, is too old for senior positions in politics. In the case of this column, he didn't really report Biden's actions...Over the decades many Social Security reforms have been proposed including upping the age, which in subtle ways has happened...65 was once the age to claim full benefits, now it's been upped, year by year. Not exactly sure where it is now. But since many of us live longer than the actuarial tables of the 1940s predicted, we are out of sync with the money available. This is a change that makes sense except for the disabled (and I think there are exceptions made here, but not sure what they are). I am simply saying that all programs need adjustments, if they last long enough. Who could be surprised that in Biden's decades-long career many issues have popped up and he has taken a stand on them. Krugman could have listed some of those...so I'm not buying his outrage at Sanders, and I am not voting for Sanders either (unless...).
Bruenig: she comes from the Washington Post; maybe this is her first column. It's an opinion. Not a very convincing one. She's come from mostly writing human interest columns...so let's see whether she really has a political instinct that informs our opinions. In the meantime, I am sticking with Dan Balz and E.J. Dionne at the Post. Bruenig's addition to the Times opinion staff looks like more of Michelle Cottle et al.
Krugman: "There has always been an ugly edge to some of Sanders's support, a faction of followers who denounce anyone raising questions about his positions--even Warren!--as a corrupt capitalist shill. Until now, however, you could argue that Sanders himself wasnt responsible for the bad behavior of some of his supporters. You cant make that argument now."
DeleteKrugman doesn't really connect the dots for me. Every candidate has some nasty supporters of you want to beat the bushes hard enough. Someone in Bernie's campaign took a clip of Biden out of context, but not sure this was Bernie-approved or that Bernie has exploited it.
If Bernie wanted to play hardball with Biden, Biden has a long long record of missteps to play with. In the debates, which have been my main source of info about the candidates, both Bernie and Biden have stayed primarily in waters that are issues-oriented. And I laud them both for that.
Krugman strikes me as someone who wants to find reasons not to like it trust Bernie, as do the mainstream operators in the Democratic Party. That coven of Hillarites running the DNC last time around did their best to stack the deck against Bernie, and possibly that's why we have the leadership we do now.
I am not really sure what Bruenig's point is. That Bernie should fight dirty? Or dirtier? Dear God, haven't we had enough of political backstabbing and ad hominem with Trump?
If you are committed to getting rid of Trump, as I think Bernie is, you have to push your views vigorously in the primaries, but not burn bridges that would make you an un-credible partisan for someone else who gets the nomination. Bernie is walking that line.
"Over the decades many Social Security reforms have been proposed including upping the age, which in subtle ways has happened...65 was once the age to claim full benefits, now it's been upped, year by year. Not exactly sure where it is now."
DeleteI think it's age 67 for me. I was born in 1961. Two extra years of work for me. I don't mind working, but still ...
Arbitrary age requirements are not the way to go. Morbidity tables show that disease risks go way up after age 60. The age at which you retire on full benefits should be adjusted to your health status. I lost a lot of money when I had to retire at 62.
DeleteFew people I know are working after age 60 anyway. Their employers give them buyouts or just lay them off because they cost too much.
Reagan floated means testing SS, but that turns it into a handout instead of a pension-like investment.
Not sure you have to wait to 67, but if you take SS at 65, your monthly payment is less than if you had waited...or something like that. My impression is that it is a system that currently tries to take account of longer life spans by either lowering the monthly payment at 65 or by upping the payment the longer you put off claiming social security.
DeleteAt some point you have to take Social Secuirty, but (again my impression) if you wait long enough you get a larger monthly payment than you otherwise might...or there's a lump payment to insure you get what you deserve....
In any case, lets be clear many claimants get more than they put into the system with their wage deduction (plus employer contribution). Currently that is 6.2 for employer and 6.2 for employee, plus the deduction for Medicare (1.45 for employer and 1. 45 for employee). It is a combo of mandated savings for the employee, mandated retirement tax for the employer, plus what the government throws in when all of that doesn't add up to what you are owed.
Okay....correct me you SS benefices.
And as Jean points out, there is penalty if health issues force retirement at an earlier age than 65.
DeleteMy understanding is that it maxes out at age 70; even if you wait longer, you don't get a larger payment.
DeleteThey're gradually increasing the age at which you get full benefits (was 66 for me), never mind life expectancy is dropping.
DeleteYes, you can earn max benefits if you work until age 70.
COLA raises are small and infrequent and do not keep pace with the cost of Medicare premiums they take out of your benefit.
Interesting side note: You can protect assets with divorce in the case of a catastrophic illness. Anything you owed at time of death is taken out of your estate only, not the ex's. If you have been married for a certain number of years, you still get SS death benefits of the ex spouse. We know a few people who have gone the divorce-in-name-only route. Our lawyer told us the government is on to couples who do and may deem it fraud if the couple continued to cohabitate.
Feds don't like old geezers working their system!
Been away. The social security full retirement age has been going up gradually. It is now 66 1/2. For those born after 1960, it will be 67.
DeleteThe Social Security Act was passed in 1935 - and the full retirement age was set at 65 then. The current schedule of benefits according to year of birth is here.
https://www.ssa.gov/planners/retire/agereduction.html
Those who retire early, at 62, do receive a smaller benefit, as the payout schedule assumes that they will collect benefits for a longer period of time. I calculated the breakeven at about 77 when my husband retired. My brother is the same age, and he started collecting at 62, assuming he would not make it to 77 because of serious health problems. He did make it, and is still going strong. As Jean has noted, that may not be the case for all who retire early.
The average lifespan for those in the 1930s was 58 for men and 62 for women. Big change from today. Many people didn't collect SS for very long, if at all. The average life expectancy today is 78.7 years - for men it is ~77 and for women ~ 81. So, on average people have almost 20 more years of life expectancy than when the 65 age was set in 1935.
The ratio of those paying into the system cf.to number of beneficiaries has also worsened - lots of old folk for the number of workers.
The money we paid into the system was not invested but was used by the Feds for other purposes, so younger generations support the older.
Stanford study:
https://web.stanford.edu/class/e297c/poverty_prejudice/soc_sec/hsocialsec.htm
Both my husband and I deferred collecting to age 70. How many risk-free investments are there that had a guaranteed 8% annual, non-taxable return? He continued to work until he was 74. I stopped at 67, mostly because I could no longer do my work with poor hearing. I needed to do a lot of phone research, and talking on the phone got too difficult, especially because I usually had to use speaker so that I could take notes.
Because of the type of work we did, my brother and I had to fund all of our own retirement accounts - we were both self-employed for most of our working lives. My husband worked for a very small, scientific consulting company(18-20 employees depending on contracts) that eventually had a 401K plan, starting when he was about 40 years old - no company plan until then. So, deferring SS made a lot of sense for us.
One of the few breaks in the tax code is that I could start collecting SS on my husband's record (1/2 of his non-adjusted for deferment benefit) and then switch to my own at 70. Which is what I did, and got a good monthly "raise" then. Our tax advisor recommended waiting since we were both still working past retirement age. Otherwise we would have had to pay taxes on the income at the marginal rate. Since we had regular income, it made no sense to collect at the normal age.
Any youngsters reading this, like Jim, might want to do some advance planning by using the SS tool to estimate benefits.
https://www.ssa.gov/benefits/retirement/estimator.html
If you get laid of or "RIFed" in your 50s or 60s, it's much harder to find work that pays the same as what you were getting, or any job at all. That happened to my husband. For a while he worked a couple of part time jobs which together didn't add up to his former pay. He ended up retiring and taking SS at 64. Which was less than if he waited until 66. But it was actually a raise. He continued to work one of the part time jobs. I was fortunate to have health insurance (which also covered him) through my job, and continued working until 67. I was also fortunate to have half of a pension. It was half because the company froze the fund after the big downturn.
DeleteOne of my sons said he didn't think SS would be there for him. I told him that his generation (and mine) needed to fight for it, not to let that be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The PTB would like nothing better than to get rid of it.
I would like to see retirees have more control over their SS benefits. For example, why not let rich people who don't need their SS pass half their accrued benefit on to an individual or organization when they die. The other half could be folded into the SS system to expand benefits for others and deal with the glut of Boomers who are going to seriously stress the system.
DeleteI keep reading about the influx of cash into the economy that's going to happen as the Boomers take their mandatory required disbursement from their 401Ks.
DeleteI think the Republican idea for funding paid maternity leave or family leave really stinks. They propose to take it out of Social Security, and the person's eligibility just gets delayed by that much.
Half of the Boomers are already 65, so where is it? Boomers generally have far less in retirement savings than previous generations owing to the demise of the employer pension. That and our rampant consumerism.
DeleteThe Trump idea for pretty much everything stinks.
Desperate people will raid their SS, whether it's for child care or early retirement due to illness or layoff. Then they will become burdens on the state in their old age and, sorry to keep beating this drum, euthanasia to put people out of their financial miseries is gonna look mighty good.
IMnotsohumbleO, the NYT is trying too hard.
ReplyDeleteI am not a fan of populist movements from either side. Historically, they end up way to the right anyway because they are triggered by messiahs. Messiahs don't need help, only fans. When Michael Bloomberg advised that he "hire a lot of people who are "smarter than you," our current messiah replied, "Mike, there is no one smarter than me." I hear that attitude from Bernie, as well. At least his campaign doesn't have the usual component of populist racism. Maybe that explains why they are trying to impute antifeminism to him.
And then there is this: Sanders is not a Democrat. Trump is not a Republican. If they are the candidates, that's the end of the two-party system as we knew it, destroyed by their own "reforms." The party label becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of the candidate. Just sayin'.
That being said, Katherine is right to suggest that if you don't vote blue, it'll be all on you.
The fat boy is coming down to host a Superb Owl party at "his" club that you pay for. Another few hundred thou out of your pocket when the C-5A arrives with his motorcade cars.
Just curious, Tom: How is the effort to get Trump to reimburse for security by of local law enforcement going? What's his tab up to now?
DeleteTrying to follow Trump's costs is a fulltime job for a bunch of Web sites. The Huffington Post recently calculated the total cost of his golf hobby, to the end of December, at $118 million, much of it paid to the Trump Organization. (He charges the Secret Service for the golf carts they use to protect him.) The first year here ran the sheriff and other law enforcement a little over $5 million, most of which has been paid reportedly. Not so much has been said about the next two years; everyone is afraid to offend him. He sues.
DeleteThe air space closures put a flight training school out of business, un-reimbursed. His presence at Mar-a-Lago makes Worth Avenue (Palm Beach's answer to Rodeo Drive) inaccessible from the South and difficult to reach from the North. The merchants are eating those losses. Whatever he does to the airport's costs are supposedly covered by some federal agency. Don't know if they are.
Tom,
ReplyDeleteNot sure what you mean by "the NYT is trying too hard."
To show how even-handed it is. To show that not a bird falls unnoticed.
DeleteThe Supremes yesterday un-stayed Trump's order than poor immigrants KEEP OUT. Thomas & Gorsuch concurred and told the lower courts to stop enjoining the Master's ideas. Nothing about that in the electronic NYT, which was busy interviewing people of color who work in Mayor Pete's campaign. That's what I meant.