Confirmed: Sanders is selling a fantasy agenda.

[arely staircase]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/05/09/confirmed-sanders-is-selling-a-fantasy-agenda/

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has attracted a passionate following because he is selling his followers a fantasy. And not just any fantasy — but one of epic proportions. A group of respected, nonpartisan experts offered the public a sense of the scale on Monday, releasing the most thorough analysis yet on Sanders’s plan and finding that it is profoundly flawed. Before the Democrats agree to adopt his agenda, a price they might pay to get him to end his doomed campaign, they should be clear about what they are signing onto.

Sanders articulates broad principles — free health care for all; free college for everyone. When pressed on the details, he falls back on broad explanations — other countries to seem to do these sorts of things, so we can, too. But in the real world of policymaking, where specific numbers must add up and tradeoffs must be considered, his program is a flop.

[tonyt53]

1. Bernie likes to hear himself talk

[AgingAmerican]

2. He offers actual governance

Pre 1980 style. Hillary supporters are simply satisfied with the right wing status quo, and will do anything to stop progress.

[synergie]

30. No, he does not. He literally has no clue how to get anything done.

Bernie supporters simply do not understand how things actually work, and many were not alive pre 1980, so might be gulled into thinking that all of you folks were actually killing about Washington so that presidents without actual policies and who have no clue how to get things done simply waved in your general direction to get the opposition to stop opposing them.

HRC supporters are the ones who have been voting, the BSers are who gave us this RW status quo with their purity tests and angry tantrums about withholding their vote, they demand progress but won't do any thing to achieve it and insult those of us who have been working and voting to achieve the progress that they take for granted.

They are the enablers of the right wing, and do not care for actual progress, just their way, right now and damn any consequences. It us why the Bernie or Bust movement, pushed by Trump's sin in law is so appealing to them. Nothing like Berning down the country, they are not the ones who will be affected by RW lunacy anyway. Those if us supporting HRC do not have that luxury, and we know what gram the actual R W does, which is what makes your accusation so incredibly vile.

What can one expect from people who think that Southern blacks "celebrate"the "culture"of the confederacy after all.

[AgingAmerican]

31. Hillary supporters don't recognize actual governance

And apparently never will. Your t-page is showing, BTW.

[JonathanRackham]

3. Confirmed on a blog? One opinion?

Major research investment.

[GreatGazoo]

19. Yes, the blogger read his own opinion and is now confirming it.

Very thorough these WaPo opinion guys...

[uponit7771]

4. Yep, marketing slogans aimed mostly at white male economic angst.

[tonyt53]

9. Yup

[uponit7771]

12. Sanders spoke of getting back to working class white vote in 2014 I did not think he would try that

... shit after 2008 and saw how the Obama coalition got him into office.

[azurnoir]

34. can you give us a link showing us where he said those words?

and no some op-ed where Bernie is interpreted by a Clinton supporter as meaning that.

[Warren Stupidity]

5. Offs. You are really this defeated? How sad for you.

[arely staircase]

8. Defeated....my candidate is winning?

Unlike the Bern

[Warren Stupidity]

11. You personally.

If you accept the op you posted then you have given up.

[arely staircase]

13. By not accepting broad generalizations with no specifics as to how he would : a. Pass such an agenda

b. Pay for it.

That isn't defeated. That is just being an informed voter.

[angrychair]

25. Have you looked??

I suggest you actually look.
He has submitted detailed explanations as to how he gets there, that have been talked about for months on this site.

1. There as detailed and specific as HRC's plans.

2. Specifically, how does HRC get her programs, while not as far reaching or effective as Sanders, are still in same area as his plans. Dems have no control in Congress or the majority of state legislatures, have been losing elections badly the last six years, how does she get her agenda through?

[mooseprime]

6. this article is absurd and hopelessly tendentious

incoming presidents make >8,000 appointments in their first month of office. that's so they don't have to do everything themselves.

every major western country has provided all these things for decades, and they're ahead of us in health care, happiness, infant mortality, education, press freedom, and most every other category that matters. and their economies are tiny compared to ours.

[Rass]

7. Europeans didn't get the memo

Someone, please forward the memo and let the Europeans know that their free healthcare,misc. benefits and free college is an impossibility.

[jpmonk91]

27. I'm doing a post about modern Europe

And how the progressive agenda has shaped it. 2nd in a series of posts here is part 1: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1280194197

[deathrind]

10. Closing...

Tax loop holes.

Reducing corporate welfare.

...and perhaps not dropping over a trillion dollars to try to make an airplane capable of "booting up"...let alone reach V1.

These are just 3 ways to achieve the funding.

[Waiting For Everyman]

14. This guy is an obvious Hillary shill.

Everything he writes about anyone else is demonizing; everything he writes about her is glowing.

Sanders' plans have been verified by plenty of more highly credible people than this guy. So the writer is also an outright liar.

[basselope]

15. It's like people have never heard of having GOALS.

His policies are not set in stone, do or die scenarios.. they are the GOALS. They are the things we CAN ACHIEVE.

If you set your sites low, you get Obamacare.

If you set your sites high, you might have to settle on parts of Obamacare, BUT you get a strong public option.

[Blue Meany]

18. Hillary has "Bold Goals" like capping child care costs at

10% of one's income. And she has several policy proposals relating to this that will not accomplish the task. The difference with Bernie is that if is proposals fall short I believe he'll keep fighting to find a way to accomplish the goal. With Hillary, her goals are more having something to say to each potential constituency than about actually solving problems. She's not the only politician like this, but I feel like looking at her platform is like watching a power point with a slide for each consitutency, and a few bullet points on each slide about how she would fix their problem(s). But most of her proposals are too weak to make much difference.

One of the best things she said during the campaign was that even if we had income equality it would not end racism. She's right about that. So what's her plan for ending racism?

[JCanete]

21. Yep, she's just paying lip service. Her favorite line seems to be "I think we need to do more,"

right before she gives us a line of bullshit focusing on one little symptom of a systemic problem. It's just rhetoric and pandering all day. For any real change, I can always count on her to "do more" to mischaracterize it.

"I don't want to pay for Donald Trump's kids to go to college," is such transparent bologna in the context of making the rich pay their fair share in taxes(in which case I would not care if we paid for their tuition), as if its HER making sure the rich don't take advantage of the poor taxpayer.

[Armstead]

24. Very astute observation

The difference with Bernie is that if is proposals fall short I believe he'll keep fighting to find a way to accomplish the goal. With Hillary, her goals are more having something to say to each potential constituency than about actually solving problems

[pinebox]

16. WaPo.....

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/3/11/headlines/washington_post_runs_16_anti_sanders_ads_in_16_hours

[Blue Meany]

17. Well the columnist is consistent...

Never any criticism of Hillary Clinton, but every one of her opponents, except O'Malley, have been trashed. I wonderr if he is one of the journalists hired by David Brock.


May 9 Confirmed: Sanders is selling a fantasy agenda Sanders offers unchecked ideological certainty and unkeepable promises.

Apr 27, 2016 Bernie Sanders Doesn’t Get Policy, Part MCMXLIII Public health policy is the latest victim of his obtuse reasoning.

Apr 20, 2016 Yes, Sanders and Trump can lose, fair and square
They should acknowledge that the rules are what they are — and have been this whole time.

Apr 20, 2016 Sanders’s dull policy thinking is once again obvious
Even when he is right -- like on climate change -- he seems to get a lot wrong.

April 6, 2016 The ideologues win Wisconsin But the results are much more significant for Cruz than for Sanders.

Mar 16, 2016 Clinton trounces Sanders, then reveals how she will fight Trump
After Tuesday night, it is no longer presumptuous for Clinton to begin her great pivot to the general election.

Mar 7, 2016 Clinton is running for president. Sanders is doing something else. It is amazing how little the Democratic race has really changed.

Feb 9, 2016 Clinton struggles against Sanders’s over-promising in New Hampshire Young New Hampshirites appear determined to give him, not her, the benefit of the doubt.

Feb 5, 2016 Sanders can’t just be the president of income inequality Sanders’s one-note performance on foreign policy.

Feb 2, 2016 Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders are authentically wrong Sincerely proposing poorly thought-out policy does not change the fact that it is poorly thought-out policy.

Jan 31, 2016 The three delusions driving the Cruz and Sanders campaigns . Reality is more complicated than either acknowledge.

Jan 18, 2016 Bernie Sanders’s angry, unrealistic call for ‘revolution’ His campaign is not about governing.

Nov 20, 2015 Bernie Sanders’s ‘democratic socialism’ misses the point Whatever you call it, his agenda doesn’t address the country’s challenge.

Nov 15, 2015 Can anyone really imagine Bernie Sanders in the White House? Clinton won the debate. And, if she and her opponents keep this up, she’s almost certainly going to win the nomination.

[Orsino]

20. Well, the fantasy of his agenda here is certainly confirmed as fantasy.

His actual agenda turns out to contain more of what we here in the real world actually need.

[frylock]

22. I don't know who I should believe. Robert Reich or this Bezo clown.

[Armstead]

23. Disapproved of by the Libertarian Bezos Times...Aw shucks

[Ken Burch]

26. A blog entry doesn't "confirm" anything.

It's simply one cynical centrist(i.e. conservative)opinion.

[Teamster Jeff]

28. "No we can't" - "No new taxes" - "More war"

Quite the inspiring neocon message we will be going with in the general.

People will be dancing in the streets after watching the Comcast Convention.

[LadyHawkAZ]

29. You folks do realize we heard all this in 2008?

The exact same arguments? When she was running against a different "can't win" opponent?

[Doctor_J]

32. Confirmed: Hillary Clinton is actually a republican

[B Calm]

33. The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. –Alice Walker

[oasis]

35. Confirmed: Pie in the Sky.