Democrats would be insane to nominate Bernie Sanders (or why NOT to offer a lamb to the GOP) [View all]

[Bill USA]

In his article, Dana Milbank addresses the unpleasant fact of how good the GOP is at demonizing opponents. We have seen them working over Hillary Clinton for a couple of decades. We all need to remember that with many people if you repeat a lie often enough they will begin to think it's a reality. THis works with, sorry to say it, many people (most are known as "the GOP base" but they are not limited to that group).

Nobody knows this better than the GOP. They count on people being programmable to win elections - well along with voter suppression (and, in a pinch, the Supremes to abort an election and choose who the 'winner' is). It seems many people are blythely oblivious to this fiendish facility of the GOP in their enthusiasm for their candidate who nobody doubts (in Democratic circles) is a good man. The Dana Milbank article could serve as a good medicament for those enthralled by reveries of Sir Good-at-Heart being victorious over the monstrous malevolence of the GOP - if they are open to his knowledgeable advice (and entreaty?).


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/democrats-would-be-insane-to-nominate-bernie-sanders/2016/01/26/0590e624-c472-11e5-a4aa-f25866ba0dc6_story.html

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Sanders and his supporters boast of polls showing him, on average, matching up slightly better against Trump than Clinton does. But those matchups are misleading: [font size="+1"]Opponents ("Opponents"?? ...how 'nice' of Dana to not put in print: "the GOP&quot have been attacking and defining Clinton for a quarter- century, but nobody has really gone to work yet on demonizing Sanders.[/font]

Watching Sanders at Monday night’s Democratic presidential forum in Des Moines, I imagined how Trump — or another Republican nominee — would disembowel the relatively unknown Vermonter.

The first questioner from the audience asked Sanders to explain why he embraces the “socialist” label and requested that Sanders define it “so that it doesn’t concern the rest of us citizens.”

Sanders, explaining that much of what he proposes is happening in Scandinavia and Germany (a concept that itself alarms Americans who don’t want to be like socialized Europe), answered vaguely: “Creating a government that works for all of us, not just a handful of people on the top — that’s my definition of democratic socialism.

But that’s not how Republicans will define socialism — and they’ll have the dictionary on their side. They’ll portray Sanders as one who wants the government to own and control major industries and the means of production and distribution of goods. They’ll say he wants to take away private property. That wouldn’t be fair, but it would be easy. Socialists don’t win national elections in the United States .
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