With "friends" ***ahem:Bernie*** like these, who needs enemies? (tweet and link)

[ehrnst]

89. Single payer failed in Vermont

So "wanting it" doesn't neccessarily make it something that is possible, or practical.

Also - there is no "free" healthcare or college, because people don't work for free in healthcare or education, so there's that bit of messaging that falls short. (Focus groups found that "free college" landed better with millennials than "debt free college" so that explains why that messaging was used.)

It's about funding mechanisms, and Bernie doesn't listen to people who don't walk lockstep with his ideas (see recent vilification of anyone that didn't vote for a symbolic amendment on drug prices that he supported, when there were entire laws that were in line to address the issue), so he will tolerate no discussion of other funding mechanisms that developed countries use that aren't single payer. Even Medicare isn't single payer, and looks nothing like what Bernie described as "Medicare for All." I won't go into details here, but I know whereof I speak.

There is much to be said for realism. Boring, yes. Galvanizing of large groups of people, no. But as Obama showed, slow steady progress using "establishment" methods such as legislation instead of executive orders makes lasting progress.

It's not that I reject what Sanders "wants" but his rigidity, his lack of ability to learn or listen to non-partisan experts on health policy. That puts him (for me) in the same category as anti-choice politicians who cling to the idea that eliminating Planned Parenthood will eliminate abortion.

When Bernie dismissed abortion and marriage equaltiy as a "social issue" that Dems should be "flexible" on, he completely lost me - and that was in 2013.

So no, I don't consider that "progressive" as much as white straight male lefty, especially when a politician disses Planned Parenthood and the Black Congressional Caucus as "establishment groups," when they have the nerve not to endorse him.

Pro-choice advocates and people of color are very important progressive coalitions, and any 'revolution' that doesn't consider them allies isn't really "progressive," but rolls us back decades.

No superficial "unity" is worth that.