The Democratic Party's Civil War Is Just Getting Started

[JDPriestly]

58. Bernie and his supporters (in my experience) view the job of the president to use the

bully pulpit to advocate for the right policies, not just the achievable policies.

Part of the job of the president is to inspire the country toward greater morality in public policy.

Bernie is up to that part of the job as well as to the organizational part of the job. He proved that when he was mayor of Burlington. He has demonstrated his ability to work with Republicans and conservative Democrats always forwarding the highest ideals while in the House and Senate.

Read his book, and you will learn what his philosophy of government is. It is much better than that of the Clintons. He doesn't just say, "It Takes a Village." He says, "Let's Build a Village that Enables Us All to Achieve Our Best."

Bill Clinton moved into the White House in 1993. The next president will move into the White House in 2017. That will be 24 years from Bill Clinton's moving into the White House. Think of what 24 years has meant in history. 1940 -- WWII to 1964 -- the election of LBJ. In that time, there was the Korean War and Sputnik and the space age began.

Another 24 year period was between 1980 and 2004. The internet was born. That birth changed our world.

What have the last 24 years brought? Climate change and the effect of fossil fuels and global warming have disrupted a natural balance in our environment. We will have to seriously deal with that in the next four years or face many difficulties for which we are not prepared.

I view those who support Hillary's incremental approach to many of our problems as fearful and unrealistic. We are going to have to be much more honest about limitations and our social interdependence in the coming years. Bernie is willing to talk about how we can move into the future. Hillary is still talking about a world that no longer exists, a reality that is the past.

That's why I support Bernie. We need universal healthcare. We must move the world toward the peaceful resolution of border, religious, ethnic, racial and gender disputes and the appreciation of our differences. That will take patience and a more spiritual approach than Hillary demonstrates that she is capable of. She is an incrementalist, but a very impatient one. It's just her nature. Bernie talks of revolution but is by nature a very patient person.

I think Bernie is what we need now. He will probably be our next president somehow.

And Bernie is not part of the corruption. That is what draws many of his voters to him. Hillary on the other hand, is smack dab in the middle of all the corruption. Doesn't mean she is an evil person. I don't think that at all. It's just the fishbowl of corruption that she lives in. Her fundraising dinners that cost what to most Americans are astronomical funds, are proof of that. $2700 at $7.25 an hour is over 370 hours of work -- over 9 forty-hour weeks of work. At $27 per hour, it is 100 hours of work or over 2.5 forty-hour weeks of work. When she holds fundraisers and the donations are $2700 per guest or even table, she is not raising money from ordinary Americans. She is excluding a lot of working people from her table. The unions may back her, but the rank and file union members in most unions couldn't afford the crumbs from the tables at one of her fundraisers.

That's corruption. Because people who can afford to give $2700 to a candidate expect something in return, something that may not benefit the person earning $7.25 or even $27 per hour. And the fact that she continues to receive money from these very generous donors tells us that the people who can afford those kinds of donations feel confident that they are going to get from her what it is that they want in return for that money. That is corruption.