Bernie’s Way - Slate

[WillyT]

Bernie’s Way
The Vermont senator doesn’t want to bring Republicans and Democrats together. He means to tear it all down.
By Jim Newell - Slate
Feb. 8 2016 5:31 AM


Sen. Bernie Sanders at a campaign stop in Davenport, Iowa, on Jan. 29, 2016.

<snip>

The students of Concord High School had just finished a week of exams but remained in school for an afternoon assembly. The New Hampshire school’s guest speaker was 74-year-old Sen. Bernie Sanders. Rather than groaning about having to stick around for another couple of hours, though, the students were elated.

“It’s so funny, we’ve been bringing some candidates in throughout the year, and everyone’s really excited and been asking good questions and having a great time,” said Chrigus Boezeman, a social studies teacher doubling effectively as Sanders’ hype man on this Friday in January, a few weeks before the New Hampshire primary. “And everyone’s saying to me, ‘Mr. Boezeman, gosh, it’s really great that you’re having all of these candidates come in. But … do you think Mr. Sanders can come in?’ ” The students, who were about to get the candidate they’d wanted to see for months, whooped with approval, breaking out into periodic chants of “BER-NIE, BER-NIE!” while they waited.

A high school student body is never the most voter-rich crowd to address on a cramped two-day swing through a crucial primary state. But for Sanders, whose campaign message rests on expanding voters’ realm of the possible in an age of frustratingly static politics, the opportunity to mold impressionable young minds was too good to pass up. These are the same sort of minds that then-Sen. Barack Obama, the last candidate to successfully inspire voters to look beyond the stale politics of the day and imagine something better, captivated in 2008.

“People sometimes think, and the media picks up on this: Well, Washington’s very bitter, very dysfunctional, and the reason is Democrats and Republicans can’t get along,” Sanders told the assembled students. “That is not the issue at all.”

“It’s not a question of personalities,” he continued. “It is a question of philosophy. Some of my colleagues believe that we should cut, or end, Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. That government should not be involved in those areas. That, essentially, as a nation, we are out there on our own. Others believe that as American citizens that we are entitled to rights.” He mentioned, as just one example, “the right of Colleen”—a Concord High School student who had told Sanders that she’s facing the prospect of $80,000 in college debt even though she has “never gotten a B in [her] life”—“and millions of other young people to get a college education if they have the ability to do so, regardless of the income of their family.” Or the right to have health care “because they are human beings.”

The students met this with rapturous applause. But how would he, as another student went on to ask him, “compromise with the Republicans in the Congress to make those things happen?”

Sanders first mentioned the list of bills he has worked with Republicans to pass, namely the Veterans Affairs reform bill he successfully marshaled through Congress alongside Sen. John McCain. He ticked off these accomplishments in a flat, perfunctory manner—the practical items his advisers insist he list before returning to the theoretical battlefield he prefers.

“But there is a more important question,” he continued, “and that is that the Congress must begin to do the work that the American middle class and working families want them to do, rather than just do the bidding of wealthy campaign contributors.”

<snip>

More: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/02/bernie_sanders_grassroots_revolution_isn_t_interested_in_barack_obama_s.html

[840high]

1. K/R

[Jenny_92808]

2. "First they ignore you,

then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." ~ Mahatma Gandhi

(I see Willy is in the attack mode of that process)

[WillyT]

3. You Betcha !!!

[ebayfool]

4. Awesome, WillyT!

Love that he's making time to bring future voters into the fold - TY for this link!

[WillyT]

5. You Are Quite Welcome !!!