Polls show Bernie Sanders popularity among all voters is plummeting

[PatrickforO]

178. Maybe. But I remember Clinton in the 2008 primary being asked if

she felt healthcare was a 'right' not a 'privilege.'

The question came from one of the media heads looking for the next 'gotcha' to inform the next 24-hour news cycle.

Clinton wouldn't say.

To be fair, neither did Obama. That's my point. These things might well have been on the platform, but none of our candidates were talking forcefully about them.

Here's what I think, at age 60, after seeing what I've seen in politics. In '92 a group of Democrats decided to move to the center because they didn't think the liberal message still worked. It was an effort to promote new talking points, ones that attempted to reconcile the right and left. The Third Way people eschewed the New Deal philosophy, downplayed Keynesian economics and had a belief in the power of the market to solve problems government could not. Clinton got in there and did a pretty good job. He assigned Hillary to the healthcare issue, and she tried and got burned badly.

I don't know why the New Deal went by the wayside. Oh yeah, the MIC and Vietnam. And the Republicans - they got tough. Never back down, never apologize, lie, cheat - all about winning. Not governing. Newt Gingrich back in the 90's led a 'do nothing' House and he was proud of that.

So now, years later, we have a young generation that has been screwed every which way but loose, and they, like Americans all through our lives, have been irritated at politicians that say whatever it takes to get elected, and then do nothing, really, when they get in office. The Republicans have been like that for decades, of course, ruling by fear. Their latest effort is to try and scare us with socialism. We're supposed to just wilt every time some dumbass like Louis Gohmert says, "'Murika won't NEVER go sosha-list!"

Problem is, we have a decade at best before human-caused climate change is irreversible and this planet becomes much less habitable. Americans are going broke again from high healthcare costs. My own plan is a shitty, rationed one with financially crippling copays, and it's like that for many millions of Americans. People can't afford to by life-saving drugs, and look what has happened to the price of insulin. And what about our children and grandchildren? Debt slaves to forever-loans they had to take out for college, and they make less, have amassed less wealth, start fewer businesses, and even are delaying starting families and buying homes because of this particular brand of predatory capitalism.

And then the Republicans pass the giant tax cut for billionaires and corporations so they can give yet more of our money to these parasites.

So yeah, progressives like me are calling bullshit, and insisting, demanding that our candidates learn to talk articulately about the kitchen table issues that I brought up here, and then DO something about those issues that actually helps us when they get in office. As to electability, none of our people are going to get anywhere if they don't find a way to show people what bullshit the Republicans are spouting and turn the conversation to these very real issues.

That's why I like the Parkland kids, and those kids that confronted Diane Feinstein (and yes, I did watch the entire footage of that), the kids around the world striking so our elected officials can act like 'adults' in legislating solutions for climate change. And AOC and the rest of the young, divers members of the House. They are calling bullshit on the way things are. I'm calling bullshit on the way things are. Bernie has been calling for a 'political revolution,' wherein Americans once again TAKE THE RESPONSIBILITY of learning about the issues and then holding those they elect accountable for performance.

But we don't have decades to address these things. Not any more. Look at your children. Look at your grandchildren. We need to pull out all the stops.