2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: More and more this primary has distilled down to one thing for me: [View all]thesquanderer
(11,982 posts)You mentioned the college plan in particular. Even the articles I've seen that are critical of his college plan agree on the numbers, more or less... Bernie claims that the plan will cost $75 billion, critical articles (in U.S. News, and quoted elsewhere) say $70 billion, so in the same range. Sanders specifies a particular way to pay for it (financial transaction tax) which is expected to raise even far more than that, and I haven't seen anyone say that it wouldn't... the critical articles I've seen have instead argued against the idea of a financial transaction tax (i.e. http://insider.foxnews.com/2016/02/06/who-pays-bernie-sanders-free-college-proposal ), and unconvincingly IMO.
As for his economic plans overall, you may have seen the article discussed here yesterday, "The economist who vouched for Bernie Sanders big liberal plans is voting for Hillary Clinton"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/18/the-economist-who-validated-bernie-sanders-big-liberal-plans-is-voting-for-hillary-clinton/
This economist prefers Hillary as a candidate, but not because Bernie's plans don't add up. Rather he says, "I agree with Bernie on economic issues, but there are other issues.
I am specifically picking links from people who are NOT for Sanders, to show that even *they* don't necessarily say his plans don't add up, as you do. Sanders' site goes into great detail about how his plans will be paid for (much more so, in fact, than Hillary's site does, and I provided some examples at http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511174130 and also discussed how she doesn't even have any specific health care plans, much less a way to pay for them, at my post #9 at http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511222901 ).
So your proposition that his policies don't add up is simply not a fact... it is, at best, disputable. As to whether they are do-able, that gets back to his ability to motivate voters. He doesn't have to do everything on day one, he doesn't have to completely flip Congress in 2016. As the saying goes, every long journey starts with a single step... if we don't start moving this direction, we'll never get there. If Sanders can build and keep his base motivated, what can't be done right away can be further moved toward in the elections of 2018, 2020, 2022, and into the terms of his successor. To say this can't all be done immediately is not a good reason not to start. If you wait until this is all immediately achievable before voting for someone with this platform, it will never happen.
It is not pandering, it is not lying, he is laying out a platform that no one denies would take time and effort to implement. That's not an excuse not to try.