Not just a dreamer: The pragmatic impacts of Bernie Sanders’ big ideas

[LuckyTheDog]

The race for the Democratic presidential nomination has pitted a dreamer against a realist, right? Bernie Sanders is the unrealistic one, and Hillary Clinton, the pragmatist, is the candidate who can get things done.

That’s what many pundits say. But, even with Tuesday’s setbacks to the Sanders campaign, it’s worth examining which is actually unrealistic – Bernie’s pledge to make the country more equitable and sustainable? Or Hillary’s progressive talking points, given her deep ties to corporate power players?

One way to see if Sanders really is a dreamer is to look at his record as mayor of the city of Burlington, Vt.

As a candidate for mayor in 1980, Sanders focused on economic fairness just as he does today, and then, too, he was dismissed as a fringe candidate. He squeaked into office, winning by just 10 votes. But he was re-elected three times, each time by a larger margin. His accomplishments won over even many of his early opponents, according to professors and authors Peter Dreier and Pierre Clavel, writing in The Nation. And six years into his term, U.S. News and World Report named him one of the top mayors in the country.

MORE HERE: http://yonside.com/the-pragmatic-impacts-of-bernie-sanders-big-dreams/

[tonyt53]

1. Lots of people dream

But it takes understanding of how to get things done that makes a person great. Bernie has failed miserably at that.

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. Try actually reading the full article.

[AgingAmerican]

3. Tell us how Hillary would get things done

[Scuba]

5. Better yet, tell us **what** Hillary would bet done. Pretty sure I won't like those things.

[Armstead]

4. I wish to hell Bernie had pushed his mayoral experience more

He was great. Named one of America's Best Mayors.

He got a lot of good things done, from fixing potholes to balancing the budget to revitalizing the arts to affordable housing...etc. If he could get that out there, I think it would do a lot to "correct the record" about his experience.


http://www.wbur.org/2016/03/18/bernie-sanders-burlington-vermont


http://portside.org/2015-06-05/bernies-burlington-what-kind-mayor-was-bernie-sanders

Sanders was one of a handful of mayors during the 1970s and '80s - who sought to use the levers of local government to adopt enlightened progressive policies. More than in any other city, Burlington's progressives consolidated those reforms over the long haul. The coalition that coalesced around Sanders in 1981 governed Burlington for all but two of the next 31 years.

Burlington is now widely heralded as an environmentally friendly, lively and livable city with a thriving economy, including one of the lowest jobless rates in the country. Burlingtonians give Sanders credit for steering the city in a new direction that, despite early skepticism, proved to be broadly popular with voters.

A growing number of cities -- including Seattle, New York, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Newark and others -- are now led by progressive mayors. They are adopting municipal minimum wage laws, requiring developers to build mixed-income housing, strengthening regulations against corporate polluters, and enacting other policies to address the nation's growing economic inequality and environmental crises.

What they can learn from Sanders is that good ideas are not sufficient. Creating more livable cities requires nurturing a core of activist organizations that can build long-term support for progressive municipal policies.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/10/bernie-sanders-mayor/407413/

...If there is a clear message, however, it would not seem to be in Sanders’s election, but in his reelection in 1983 and again in 1985, by increasingly wide margins.He has proven to be an excellent administrator, appointing people who are in general younger, better educated and more capable than the people they have replaced.

He has streamlined city government and has introduced procedural and financial reforms, many of which have been supported by Republican members of the 13-person Board of Aldermen, a body the Sanderistas now control, but that, in Sanders’s first year, when he had only two supporters on the Board, controlled him, even to the point of refusing to allow him to appoint his own secretary.


Allen Gear, a Republican member of the Board of Aldermen since 1979, looking back over Sanders’s tenure as mayor, says, “He’s done things I don’t think we Republicans could have done, because the two traditional parties in a town like this are very close. We interact with each other on business over coffee, over tea, crumpets and marmalade, if you will, and it would have been very hard for us, us being Republicans, if we had the Chief Executive’s spot, to have done some of the things Bernie has done ... He’s taken a lot of very Republican ideas and put them in place. Such as combining all of the garages of the various city departments and putting them into a single public-works department, initially a Republican proposal, to gain efficiency in handling city rolling stock ... He’s put a lot of modern accounting practices and money-management practices into place that are good Republican business practices ... And he has surrounded himself with some very talented, vigorous people.”

[Uncle Joe]

6. Bernie is the visionary that gets things done.

Thanks for the thread, LuckyTheDog.