#BernieSanders News Roundup for 1/24-1/29/2016 | Blog#42
This is my Bernie Sanders news roundup for the week ending in 1/29/2016
Want to reverse sky-high inequality? Bernie Sanders is the pragmatic choice
In my nearly 50 years in Washington I’ve learned that real change happens only when Americans are mobilized. That’s more the case now than ever before. Robert Reich Wednesday 27 January The Democratic contest has repeatedly been characterized as a choice between Hillary Clinton’s “pragmatism” and Bernie Sanders’s “idealism” – with the not-so-subtle message that realists choose pragmatism over idealism. But this way of framing the choice ignores the biggest reality of all: the unprecedented, and increasing, concentration of income, wealth and power at the very top, combined with declining real incomes for most and persistent poverty for the bottom fifth. The real choice isn’t “pragmatism” or “idealism.” It’s either allowing these trends to worsen, or reversing them. Inequality has reached levels last seen in the era of the “robber barons” in the 1890s. The only truly pragmatic way of reversing this state of affairs is through a “political revolution” that mobilizes millions of Americans. Is such a mobilization possible? One pundit recently warned Democrats that change happens incrementally, by accepting half loaves as being better than none. That may be true, but the full loaf has to be large and bold enough in the first place to make the half loaf meaningful. And not even a half loaf is possible unless or until America wrests back power from the executives of large corporations, Wall Street bankers and billionaires who now control the bakery. I’ve been in and around Washington for almost 50 years, including a stint in the cabinet, and I’ve learned that real change happens only when a substantial share of the American public is mobilized, organized, energized and determined to make it happen. That’s more the case now than ever. The other day Bill Clinton attacked Sanders’s proposal for a single-payer health plan as unfeasible and a “recipe for gridlock.” But these days, nothing of any significance is politically feasible and every bold idea is a recipe for gridlock. This election is about changing the parameters of what’s feasible and ending the choke hold of big money on our political system. In other words, it’s about power – whether the very wealthy who now have it will keep it, or whether average Americans will get some as well. Read the rest of Robert Reich' op-ed at TheGuardian.com
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Posted by Robert Reich on Thursday, January 28, 2016
Note to Hillary: Clintonomics Was a Disaster for Most Americans
Under Bill Clinton, Wall Street created a ruinous bubble, while workers lost wages and power.
By Robert Pollin
JANUARY 26, 2016
In trying to burnish her credentials as a can-do populist and to portray Bernie Sanders as a purveyor of naive socialist fantasies, Hillary Clinton has increasingly invoked Bill Clinton’s presidency as her economic policy lodestar. When Hillary was asked at the January 17 Democratic debate whether Bill Clinton would be advising her on the economy, she responded, “I’m going to have the very best advisers that I can possibly have, and when it comes to the economy and what was accomplished under my husband’s leadership in the ’90s—especially when it came to raising incomes for everybody and lifting more people out of poverty than at any time in recent history— you bet.” There is no doubt that dramatic departures from past US economic trends occurred during Bill Clinton’s presidency, including the simultaneous fall of inflation and unemployment; the reversal of persistent federal budget deficits to three years of surplus at the end of his second term; and an unprecedented run up in stock prices—i.e., the “Dot.com” bubble. But these developments need to be evaluated in a broader context. Most importantly, we need to ask whether Clintonomics really did deliver the goods for working people and the poor. The starting point for understanding Bill Clinton’s economic program is to recognize that it was thoroughly beholden to Wall Street, as Clinton himself acknowledged almost immediately after he was elected. Clinton won the 1992 election by pledging to end the economic stagnation that had enveloped the last two years of the George H.W. Bush administration and advance a program of “Putting People First.” This meant large investments in job training, education, and public infrastructure. But Clinton’s priorities shifted drastically during the two-month interregnum between his November election and his inauguration in January 1993, as documented in compelling detail by Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward in his 1994 book The Agenda. As Woodward recounts, Clinton stated only weeks after winning the election that “we’re Eisenhower Republicans here…. We stand for lower deficits, free trade, and the bond market. Isn’t that great?” Clinton further conceded that with his new policy focus, “we help the bond market, and we hurt the people who voted us in.” Read the rest of this article on TheNation.com
Jared Bernstein: Bernie, Hillary, the binding constraints of cramped reality, and the Overton Window
27 Jan 2016 By Jared Bernstein
I may be a bit out of my depth here but let me offer a few thoughts on a debate among progressives that leaves me scratching away at the old noggin.’ Here are the bones of the thing, as I kinda understand them: Argument 1: “Bernie supporters, you’re going to blow this for us!” –Hillary’s ideas are less radical than Bernie’s, ergo they’re more politically realistic. –If you don’t get this, you too are not realistic and, by getting behind an un-electable candidate, you’re going to lose everything for the left. Counterargument 1: “Hillary supporters, wake up and smell the revolution!” –Your limited vision is why progressives can’t get anywhere. Stop trying to slam shut the Overton window (the range of acceptable discourse) that Bernie is trying to open. –You’re a shill for Wall St. Read the rest right here, on Blog#42
Is Nominating Bernie Sanders a Worthwhile Gamble?
Hillary Clinton's supporters have yet to make a persuasive case that Sanders is too great a risk.
January 25, 2016
For the better part of a year, Bernie Sanders enjoyed a polite if slightly bemused welcome from the non-radical quarters of the Democratic firmament. The wing of the party represented by Sanders and Elizabeth Warren had been ascendant for most of Barack Obama’s presidency, enlarging the potential constituency for a populist presidential primary challenge to Hillary Clinton. As a grumpy-yet-affable elderly Jewish socialist who wasn’t actually a Democrat, Sanders struck members of the liberal establishment as the least-viable tribune of the party’s insurgent wing.
One week from the Iowa caucuses, we now know their assessment was wildly inaccurate. Sanders is within striking distance of Clinton in Iowa, and leads her in most New Hampshire polls. He still trails badly in more ethnically diverse Southern and Western states, but the Clinton campaign and its allies are suddenly contending with the possibility that Sanders will convert victories in both of the first two contests into polling surges elsewhere in the country, imperiling Clinton’s nomination, or at least making her path to it much longer, costlier, and more divisive. Where center-left liberals were once sanguine about the state of the Democratic primary campaign, or even grateful to Sanders for premising the debate on progressive assumptions, they are now alarmed that Sanders might pull off an upset and become the party’s nominee. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, for one, laments that “while idealism is fine and essential—you have to dream of a better world—it’s not a virtue unless it goes along with hardheaded realism about the means that might achieve your ends. ... [T]here’s nothing noble about seeing your values defeated because you preferred happy dreams to hard thinking about means and ends.” New York writer Jonathan Chait concluded his article “The Case Against Bernie Sanders” on a note of astonishment: “[I]t seems bizarre for Democrats to risk losing the presidency by embracing a politically radical doctrine that stands zero chance of enactment even if they win.”
Center-left liberals are jittery about Sanders for obvious and understandable reasons. But neither Krugman’s nor Chait’s case constitutes an airtight argument that Sanders should be defeated. To its chagrin, the Democratic establishment hasn’t made that argument either. And until that case is laid out fully, his supporters can make a persuasive counterargument that nominating Sanders is a worthwhile gamble. The case against Sanders draws emotional appeal from the widely shared, and accurate, liberal premise that defeating the GOP’s eventual nominee is the central imperative of 2016. This state of affairs stands in stark contrast with the last time Clinton vied for the presidency. In January 2008, when Democrats were on the verge of winning sweeping control over the elected branches of government, the party was understandably preoccupied with questions of process and effective use of power. Today, the Democratic Party faces a more existential dilemma: Democrats are better-poised to win national elections than at any point in modern history—and yet they would be relegated to political Siberia if they were to lose the presidency later this year. Read the rest of this article on TheNewRepublic.com
Bernie Sanders comforts sobbing Iowa woman struggling to live on minimum wage
DAVID EDWARDS 25 JAN 2016 A woman broke down in tears at a Bernie Sanders rally on Monday while explaining how difficult it was to live on minimum wage earnings. At an event in Iowa Falls, the Democratic presidential candidate asked audience members to speak out about what it was like to live on less than $12,000 a year. One woman choked up as she told Sanders that she had been living on “less than that for a long time because of disabilities.” “It’s so hard to do anything, to pay your bills,” she said, sobbing. “You’re ashamed all the time.” “When you can’t buy presents for your children, it’s really, really hard,” the woman continued. “I worked three, four, five jobs sometimes, always minimum wage.” Although the woman noted that she had a degree, she said that her parents were forced to support her. Read the rest of this article on RawStory.com
Bernie Sanders in the CNN Iowa Democratic Town Hall
https://youtu.be/_Ti37vROkho
Bernie Sanders: "We Will Raise Taxes. Yes We Will."
By Luke Brinker January 26, 2016 Breaking with decades of bipartisan political convention, Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Monday night reaffirmed that he would raise taxes on middle-income Americans to fund his "Medicare for All" health care plan. "Yes, we will raise — we will raise taxes. Yes we will," Sanders said at the CNN Democratic Presidential Town Hallat Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. "We may raise taxes," he added, "but we are also going to eliminate private health insurance premiums for individuals and for businesses." https://youtu.be/OgbZ2m25F_4 Read the rest of this article on Mic.com
Bernie Sanders on Meet The Press:
https://youtu.be/1MP1-vA6E7M
ADOLPH REED ON SANDERS, COATES AND REPARATIONS
Interview segment from Doug Henwood‘s Behind the News, 1/21/16. Audio link here. (Lightly edited for clarity.) DH: We’ve got Ta-Nehisi Coates citing the call for reparations and finding Sanders guilty of hostility towards reparations. What do you think of his critique? AR: I read the thing in The Atlantic and it’s so utterly empty and beside the point, I can’t even characterize it. You can go down Sanders’s platform issue by issue and ask, “so how is this not a black issue?” How is a $15 minimum wage not a black issue. How is massive public works employment not a black issue. How is free public college higher education not a black issue. The criminal justice stuff and all the rest of it. So one head scratching aspect of this is what do people like Coates imagine is to be gained by calling the redistribution program racial and calling it “reparations”? The charitable or benign interpretation of what he and others imagine the power of this rhetoric to be, is that there is something cathartic about it like Black Power. I’m thinking for instance of “say Black Lives Matter” or “say Sandra Bland’s name”. It’s like the demand to call it reparations which doesn’t seem to make any sense whatsoever. It doesn’t add anything to calls for redistribution if anything, it could undercut them. Since there’s nothing (less) solidaristic than demanding a designer type program that will redistribute only to one’s own group and claim that that group (especially when times are getting tougher and economic insecurity is deepening for everybody) it seems like it’s guaranteed not to get off the ground and seems almost like a police action. DH: I’m not Ta-Nehisi Coates but I imagine he and others favoring reparations would respond by saying that it’s meant to address wounds that were specifically racial in their origin. AR: The logic fails on its own terms. If you grant for the sake of argument that the injuries were highly and explicitly racialized, it does not follow from that that the remedy needs to be of the same coin. And I have not seen Coates or others who make that assertion actually argue for it-i.e. give a concrete and pragmatic explanation of how (the remedy is supposed to) work. That is to say, what the response, or atonement, I suppose, for past harms would look like and what they imagine the response would actually be. Coates makes this stuff up as he goes along: by his own account, he read Baldwin and wanted to write like Baldwin and his editor would check him and say “Look, you’re writing these passages which don’t mean anything whatsoever” since he was so focussed on wanting to write like Baldwin absent having anything in particular to say. So the first question for me has always been how can you imagine putting together a political alliance that would be capable of prevailing on this issue. And what you get in response is a lot of “What black people deserve” because of the harms that have been done to them. I just think it’s fundamentally unserious politically. But I’ll say this and I’ll say this as a Sanders supporter-I’ll come clean on that. The idea that Bernie Sanders becomes the target of race-line activists now, and not Hillary Clinton, is just beyond me and it smells. It smells to high heaven. Read the rest of this interview here. Note: I've written three essays, matching Coates' output this week. You can access them here.
Why Bernie Sanders doesn’t participate in organized religion
By Frances Stead Sellers and John Wagner 01/27/2016
Growing up, Bernie Sanders followed the path of many young American Jews. He went to Hebrew school, was bar mitzvahed and traveled to Israel to work on a kibbutz.
But as an adult, Sanders drifted away from Jewish customs. And as his bid for the White House gains momentum, he has the chance to make history. Not just as the first Jewish president — but as one of the few modern presidents to present himself as not religious. “I am not actively involved with organized religion,” Sanders said in a recent interview. Sanders said he believes in God, though not necessarily in a traditional manner. “I think everyone believes in God in their own ways,” he said. “To me, it means that all of us are connected, all of life is connected, and that we are all tied together.” Sanders’s religious views, which he has rarely discussed, set him apart from the norm in modern American politics, in which voters have come to expect candidates from both parties to hold traditional views about God and to speak about their faith journeys. Every president since James Madison has made the pilgrimage across Lafayette Square to worship at St. John’s Church at least once, according to the White House Historical Association. Only three presidents, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, have been unaffiliated with a specific religious tradition,according to the Pew Research Center for Religion and Public Life. And President Obama and his predecessors have regularly hosted clergy for White House prayer sessions. Read the rest at WashingtonPost.com
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