This morning I got a long e-mail from Bernie Sanders saying that he was running for President with all the reasons why, and an invitation to sign up. I signed up and sent him $100.
My recent political decision making has been very simple.
In 2008 I volunteered for the Obama campaign. I was impressed that he had impressed college age students. I was also impressed that after Clinton had recruited all the big givers, Obama had a strategy to recruit further down on the economic scale.
In 2012 my health made it impossible to campaign for Obama. However I noticed during the primary season that he was building this big computerized network to get out the vote. So I did what I had never done before, contributed to his campaign. In fact the maximum amount. I think computer systems are better than campaign adds.
In December of 2015 I got an invitation from a Hilary Clinton supporter to a private home in Cleveland to meet Hilary.The unstated assumption was that I would write a big check for Hilary. I thought about the matter and decided I was not ready to join the elite. Besides at that point it looked like Clinton vs. Bush. I was not ready to join a battle between two royal families.
Then in February I leaned about Bernie, he finally broke through into the mainstream news. He was another candidate like Obama who appealled to the young (I have great respect for young people's judgment) and he had perfected Obama's money strategy, refusing to take the support of special interests and going for the little person with a $27 dollar campaign contribution. I sent him $100, and kept sending him another $100 every time he won. I liked this way of contributing. I also liked the $27 idea. When I found other candidates I liked, I either sent them $27, or $127 as a subtle reminder that I am a Sanders supporter.
My decision this time was very simple. The Democrats need to find somebody better than Bernie. I am going to support Bernie until I find somebody better. Most of the people on this blog seem to be into politics more than I am, and you are from all over the country. There are a lot of Democrats out there and perhaps some of them are better than Bernie, and perhaps some of you will help me find out which ones are.
In the meantime my message is clear. You got to beat the Bernie standard. Appeal to the young. Forsake the Rich.
Jack, I suspect you're going to find that many, perhaps most, of the other Democratic candidates have migrated into Bernie's neighborhood in the last couple of years. A few of them might even be crashing on his couch, and a couple might even be scheming to run him out of the house and change the locks. I think you'll have a lot of options for your donations.
ReplyDeleteBernie and that Buttigieg kid seem to be eschewing the identity politics narratives that plague the rest of the Democrats.
DeleteI don't need a candidate with a good hard luck story as his main credentials. And I don't need a candidate who is some kind of stand-up for as many repressed populations as possible--say a brown-skinned gay female who grew up speaking something other than English.
Buttigieg is gay, but it's not what he talks about except when asked. I presume he got re-elected because he got stuff done, not because he sat around talking gay rights in his rainbow tie all day.
I need a candidate who understands that the Wal-Mart heirs make more in a minute than their employees make in a year (Bernie's claim borne out by WaPo fact checkers) and that this fact seriously undermines the stability of our families, our economy, and the credibility of the nation as a front-runner in the world stage.
But I am so sick of that lying Trump, I will vote for anybody the Democrats put up.
Anybody.
stand-up s/b stand-in.
DeleteJim,
DeleteThe mainstream media establishment viewpoint is that we have all these candidates who have shifted to the left to capture the Bernie movement. But the reality is that the mainstream media establishment never liked Bernie, never gave him or our movement much coverage until they were forced to (and of course by that time they had created the Trump movement as a counter balance to Bernie).
I would trust either Warren or Sanders to carry the progressive banner. I hope they go lightly on the gun control and identity politics and concentrate on economic inequality, health care, workers' rights, etc.
ReplyDeleteMe too, I would also like to see someone who is savvy about foreign affairs and supportive of diplomacy.
DeleteI'm only a little tongue-in-cheek in noting this: I think you're describing HRC.
DeleteTo paraphrase AOC (Twitter response to Lieberman), who dat?
DeleteBernie Sanders will be 79 on election day 2020, and if he wins he will be 83 when he leaves office. At 79 I felt feisty enough to be president. By 83 I wobbled and wouldn't have been a good bet for standing through the National Anthem on a windy day. Ronald Reagan took office a few days before his 70th birthday and was showing signs of senior dementia before he left office. There must be something deep in Bernie's ego forcing him to run when he could play kingmaker and be first consultant to the next D president if his party doesn't blow it. As a candidate, it will be all downhill for Bernie.
ReplyDeleteStatistically the odds are against anyone over 60--increased risk of stroke, heart disease, dementia, and cancer. But we've had sicker presidents than Sanders who were younger--FDR, Johnson, and Kennedy, to name some within living memory.
DeleteMaybe I was grasping at straws, but early in the Reagan years, when I was younger, I figured the guy wouldn't last two terms and had a reporter call an insurance actuary and test the theory on the average 70-year old. Turns out that if you make 70, you have a better than average chance of making 75, and if you make 75 your chances of making 80 are better. And so on. Something like that. And 60 is the new 40, as I explained to my primary, who just turned 60.
DeleteStill, age has effects that mere sickness doesn't necessarily have. For one thing, when the days dwindle down to a precious few, it becomes a lot aggravating to sit with a phone that telling you "Your call is important to us" while you wait to straighten out some mistake the company you are calling made.
(I had to laugh yesterday when I heard a company give its phone number and say a "live person" would answer. Twenty years ago, the joke would have been "as opposed to a dead person?" Now, though, it is a selling point if you promise a human being will take a customer's call.
Tom,
DeleteBernie spoke well in his very short e-mail asking for funds.
"Not me. Us."
"Here is the truth: no candidate, not even the best candidate you could possibly imagine, is capable of taking on Donald Trump, the political establishment, and the billionaire class of this country alone.
There is only one way to do that. There is only one way we’re going to create a government that will truly work for all of us and not just the one percent of this country.
And that is all of us … together."
Bernie is the head of a movement. Within the first few hours 250,000 people had signed on. Almost 350,000 with more than 140,000 donations by the end of the day.
This movement needs Bernie to be effective. Maybe the young people will find someone younger to rally around and the torch will be passed? In the meantime Bernie is the symbol of where we are going
60 is not the new 40. After 60, it's all down to genetics. My grandmothers were both working full-time at age 68, and could work circles around me. They were good starchy Protestant Republican ladies who lived into their 90s and played cards for money. They both chose bad husbands who died young--and I got quite a mixed genetic inheritance.
DeleteRe: a live person to answer the phone: that's certainly the premise of those Discover Card commercials with the twins talking to one another. My personal favorite, strictly because it's such a fine example of a man scream:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.ispot.tv/ad/7gZN/discover-card-it-card-fico-surprise
I really think AOC should run. Her stock will never be higher than it is now. That was the Barack Obama calculus, and it was some pretty good math.
ReplyDeleteBut hadn't Obama actually served a term in Congress? AOC has good name recognition now. But she is in no way ready to run for president. Hopefully she will put in a lot of hard work and represent the people who sent her there. A few years down the road with some experience under her belt, then we'll see. She can't beat Trump at this juncture. We need someone who can, and who actually could run the country without an impossibly steep learning curve.
DeleteYou need to be 35 to be president. AOC is only 29. She has 7 years to get ready.
DeleteStanley is right. In addition, if everyone calls her AOC because they can't remember her name, her name recognition isn't very good. And I am sure Republican election supervisors would keep an initials-only candidate off the ballot, and even I would agree with their decision.
DeleteGood point, AOC's age disqualifies her.
DeleteRe: Obama: he was elected to the US Senate, his first federal office, in 2004, and began serving in the Senate in January 2005. He announced his presidential campaign in Feb, 2007, about two years later.
Prior to his Senate election, he was a state senator in Illinois. IIRC, he had run unsuccessfully for a US House seat at one point, possibly against Jesse Jackson Jr.
AOC is a loudmouth ditz who would be fun at a party, but who needs to learn how not to take the bait and gain some gravitas.
DeleteJean, I agree with what you're saying. But I take a certain amount of perverse enjoyment in the way she makes some people absolutely lose their minds and froth at the mouth. I think it says more about them than her.
DeleteAOC definitely scares the hell out of the folks who think they have the ideological limits if the American mind in place for all time. Personally, I agree with everything she wants to do regarding health care, climate, infrastructure, education. How to pay for it? Maybe a military geared for defense instead of World Control might yield enough savings.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
Delete"A military geared to defense"... That was what we had when the military was under the War Department. We changed the name to Defense Department when we changed the mission to war. Very interesting.
DeleteBut now. Putin claims to have hypersonic weapons we can't stop. And says he is building more. So we have to build more. But we have a Space Command. It says so on a piece of Paper with the famous signature. Make that SIGNATURE. Thank you, Mr. Trump. Thank you, Mr. Putin. Shall we dance? As Slim Pickens, playing Major Kong, prayed, "Waaaaa-hoooo!"
Lot of hype over the hypersonic missile. We allegedly scared the Soviets into bankruptcy with Ronnie's Star Wars which was a lot of BS. I thought it was BS at the time. Either the Soviet generals were dumb enough to believe it or their scientists and engineers wanted them to believe in order to get more funding. Funny how we keep hearing about these super weapons without seeing a demo.
DeleteI should add we've demonstrated interception of ballistic missiles with anti-missile missiles. Yeah, when the target is putting out a signal. I think it's still BS. Turn off the signal, add a little stealth or spoofing and good luck.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteRe: Tom and Stanley's comments about missiles: Tuesday's NYTimes had an op ed ("Are Trump and Putin Opening Pandora’s Box?") about "the American threat to withdraw from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty," and the possible results of this withdrawal "if it is ... executed in spite of warnings and without considering the consequences."
ReplyDeleteThe author is M.I.T. professor Theodore Postol, who" studies missile defense systems and has been recognized with awards for uncovering false claims about them." He concludes:
"The Trump administration must stop its extremists from ending a meaningful treaty and putting the world on a faster path to oblivion. And the Russians need to pull back from their threats and boasts about their new missiles — a foolish and dangerous reaction to American bungling that plays against their own self-interest. Everyone will win if the will exists to make those compromises. Everyone will lose if not."
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/19/opinion/inf-treaty-missile-defense.html
Yeah, Gene. Since I believe, at bottom, that these missiles are ineffective for stopping missiles, it may very well be that they are meant to be forward positioned offensive weapons. Putin's objections are not without merit. Sometimes I think that nations are the worst inventions of mankind, separating people from people and engendering fear of the Other. And The Wall is a perfect example of this.
Delete