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In reply to the discussion: Bernie Sanders lambasts 'absolute failure' of Democratic party's strategy [View all]BainsBane
(53,031 posts)as the Time article about the Alaska makes clear.
Making an issue of policy and legal reform about supposed personal virtue is problematic. Firstly, few of us are as virtuous as we claim. Secondly, the issue is about policy and law, not that one or two politicians pretend to be superior to the rest. Super Pacs can and do spend unlimited amounts of money. It is that spending that is far more revealing than statements by politicians. They spend regardless of what a politician might say, and the words don't lesson the impact of money on the political system.
I myself support legal reform, which is why I voted Democrat in the general election. Now that Trump is president and making appointments to SCOTUS, that has been set back at least a generation. Bernie, for his part, appears to have abandoned legal reform of the campaign finance system and instead talks about how all candidates should raise money like he did, which is of course impossible since few manage his level of celebrity or wall-to-wall media coverage. It also ignores the far greater influence of money in politics at the local, congressional, and legislative level, where candidates are not celebrities. We now see that among too many self-described progressive voters, the issue of systemic reform has been abandoned in favor of talking points against Democrats and the Democratic Party, with little attention to affecting a legal change of the system.
That is but one of the problems that arise from an approach to politics as about personalities rather than issues.