General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Bernie Sanders to unveil plan to guarantee every American a job [View all]Gothmog
(146,564 posts)You have not disproved the premise of my positions. Your claims are not based on facts but on your feelings about Sanders. You have done nothing to disprove the premise of my arguments with facts (your feelings about sanders really do not matter). None of your claims or feelings undercuts the premise of my positions which are based on the facts that exist in the real world.
Sanders has never accomplished anything in his long career for a reason. His proposals will not work in the real world. It is easy to make unrealistic and silly proposals when one knows that these proposals have zero chance of passing. This thread is a great example of an unrealistic sanders proposal that can not be adopted in the real world. In what universe do you think that this plan has any chance of being adopted in the real world. There are of course no specifics to this plan and the only way for such a plan to be adopted would be if the Democrats had a filibuster proof majority in the Senate and a veto proof majority in the House. That is how the real world works. Again, I note that Sanders failed utterly to get single payer adopted in Vermont. Again magic does not work in the real world.
You may like to see unrealistic proposals and you may believe in magic. Sanders proposals are not popular with voters who actually vote in the real world which is why the magical voter revolution failed. https://www.vox.com/2016/4/25/11497822/sanders-political-revolution-vote
In the real world the conditions are simply not right for a voter revolution https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/04/heres-why-i-never-warmed-bernie-sanders/
The destruction of the Southern slave economy following the Civil War
The New Deal
The first of these was 50+ years in the making and, in the end, required a bloody, four-year war to bring to a conclusion. The second happened only after an utter collapse of the economy, with banks closing, businesses failing, wages plummeting, and unemployment at 25 percent. Thats what it takes to bring about a revolution, or even something close to it.
Were light years away from that right now. Unemployment? Yes, 2 or 3 percent of the working-age population has dropped out of the labor force, but the headline unemployment rate is 5 percent. Wages? Theyve been stagnant since the turn of the century, but the average family still makes close to $70,000, more than nearly any other country in the world. Health care? Our system is a mess, but 90 percent of the country has insurance coverage. Dissatisfaction with the system? According to Gallup, even among those with incomes under $30,000, only 27 percent are dissatisfied with their personal lives.
Like it or not, you dont build a revolution on top of an economy like this. Period. If you want to get anything done, youre going to have to do it the old-fashioned way: through the slow boring of hard wood.
Without some external event as described above, there will be no voter revolution. Millions or billions or trillions of new voters are not going to rise up and help sanders pass these unrealistic proposals in the real world.
In my opinion, Sanders is not likely to run in 2020 and if Sanders does run, he will not be the nominee. Sanders will have to release his tax returns to get onto the ballot in a number of blue states due to proposed and pending ballot access laws. Sanders would also face backlash due to stunts like the attack on Congressman John Lewis at the National Convention (the video of this stunt and the fact that Sanders refused to stop this stunt will not play well with the base of the party). The Our Revolution idiots and Nina Turner are generating a great deal of anger on the part of real Democrats towards Sanders and his proposals. There are a large number of Democrats who blame sanders for Trump's victory. You can count me in that group who blame sanders for trump's victory. In addition, a large majority of Democrats live in the real world and will not accept sanders unrealistic proposals. I seriously doubt that sanders runs and I am sure that he will not get the nomination. Again, there will be no magical voter revolution where millions or billions or trillions of new voters rise up to support Sanders. Without a magical revolution in the real world, this proposal is not going to go anywhere