General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I'm ready for a revolution [View all]BainsBane
(53,001 posts)I can support all of those positions, wholeheartedly. I am more than willing to fight for all of those issues. The problem is it has become entirely about the person. I understand it isn't for you, but for many here and for Sanders himself it has become that.
He trails by 2.5 million in the popular vote and nearly 300 earned delegates. His chances of catching up are estimated by a Princeton Statistician at less than 5 percent. He is highly unlikely to be the nominee, but that doesn't mean those issues have to go away.
Bernie and high-profile supporters of his like Sarandon are in the perfect position to advance those issues, but they have to decide that the issues are what matter. Sarandon clearly has an antipathy toward Clinton entirely unrelated to her policy positions, since she denounced a range of positions that Clinton does not in fact advance.
Your point about the poor is interesting since Sanders has explicitly articulated his message as about the middle class. Then when asked to talk about racism he insisted white people didn't know what it was like to be poor. When asked to explain his remark he doubled down on it rather than saying he had misspoken, which is what I assumed he had done until I read his clarification.
His position on a $15 minimum wage is stronger for the working poor than Clinton's lower number. But on many other issues Sanders proposals are most beneficial to the upper middle class. Unlike Clinton, he has no plan to address rampant inequality in k-12 that cements generations of poverty, that would enable the children of the poor to take advantage of the free public college tuition he promises. Clinton offers a plan that provides for subsidized education for the poor but not the upper middle class. She doesn't propose single payer but that is because she knows it will never get through congress, which Sanders himself said back in 2009. Only now with a GOP majority in both houses he decides to advance it as tied to his presidential prospects, after saying it only could get 8 or 9 votes under a Democratic majority.
the economy is leaving millions out, but Sanders isn't the sole solution to that. Resting everything on him makes no sense.
Ultimately Sanders is talking about reform, not revolution. Do you really think a Trump presidency will bring about those changes for the working poor? Or do you think the violent revolution that Sarandon imagines following that presidency will unfold as you desire? Revolutions are violent, bloody, and always followed by counter revolution. If such a revolution occurred, people with far less wealth than Sarandon would be targeted. There are very few people with that much money, and social revolts target those around them. That's why shop keepers are often targeted in riots. They don't have much wealth, but they have more than others in the community.
What you describe is a reform agenda of policy positions that do not depend on the career of one man who is extremely unlikely to be the nominee, no matter how badly you want him to. Now people can decide if they care enough about issues to press them or if their anger is such that they want to exact revenge on the American public for not supporting Bernie. That ultimately depends on what they truly value, if they decide they care enough about issues to 1) even look at Clinton's policy positions, which few of her detractors have bothered doing; 2) if they want to pressure Bernie's campaign to act, behind the scenes, on their behalf; 3) if he decides he cares enough about the causes he has campaigned on to work behind the scenes to influence the direction of the party and a future Clinton administration.
But the fact is a number of Sanders supporters are not poor and some just want revenge on American voters for not doing their bidding. Most Democratic voters who earn less than $30k a year actually support Clinton over Sanders. Some oppose Clinton because she is female, and no advocacy for the working poor or middle class will change the fact that they resent women in authority. There are a range of supporters with a myriad of concerns, and then there is Bernie. Ultimately, it's up to all of them to decide how they want to proceed from here on out.