↓
 
Home » Here’s a question

Here’s a question

The New Neo Posted on by

Are Democratic leaders afraid of Sanders because they don’t want socialism?

Or are they afraid of him because they think he’s too open about his plans for socialism, and they think that would ruin his chances for election and would lead to Trump’s second term and perhaps even the flipping of the House?

I’ll tell you my answer: for the majority, it’s the second. But for a dwindling few, it’s the first.

Comments

Here’s a question — 80 Comments

  2. I agree with you NEO. Bernie rips the mask off and they don’t like it one bit.
    I also fear that he could win. The younger BernieBros do not know what Socialism really is. Of course Bernie is really a Communist. The rest of the Garden Nomes are Socialist.

  4. I agree it is the second for the most part, at least among the political class. It remains to be demonstrated what Democrat voters want, and we won’t have the answer to that question until November and if Sanders is the nominee.

    I fear Sanders is the most likely candidate to defeat Trump.

  5. Clearly #2. And they realize that they have let this pass the event horizon* and know they are stuck with a potential, strongly potential, candidate who will not actually agree to identify himself as a Democrat; he clings to his Independent moniker.

    They know that if they hold his feet to the fire and make him declare loyalty to the party, he will, instead, walk away and either run as 3rd party or encourage his followers to boycott the election. Neither option bodes well for the donkeys.

    *Stephen Hawking explains this in “Brief History of Time”.

  6. Number two for me.

    I suspect that Sanders would as a President push through enough executive orders to make Barack “I’ve Got A Pen And I’ve Got A Phone” Obama look like a piker. Recall that Salvador Allende was elected with only 36% of the vote, and never had majority support in the legislature. As a result, he pushed through the vast majority of his nationalizations by invoking a Decree Law (#520) that a military government had created 40 decades ago. BTW, Allende was the first to use that obscure Decree Law.

  7. Agreed, Neo. There are still a dwindling number of sincere moderates in the leadership of the party. But, they are few and far between.

    For most, the reaction is largely “Damnit, Bernie! We are laying very intricate plans to achieve everything you want! And you just can’t help but give away the game! When….we haven’t imported enough Democrat voters to maintain permanent hegemony! Go away!”

  8. Sen. From-NewJoisie-Bob Menendez can’t be construed a Democrat leader as such, but he metaphorically spits on Sanders’ candidacy, and no wonder there. Here’s hoping — as other observers have remarked — Sen. Bob’s fellows can learn to follow him out of the cave toward the light, spurning Sanders’ clownshow with some gusto. Doesn’t take all that much to kick off a cascade if people are thinking it and merely silent from fear of being out there alone.

  9. I vote for a third option. Another Mike hints at it. Bernie is not a team player. It matters a great deal as to the type of team. Obviously, the Democrat party team, but what is that really? How is it possible that Democrats achieve such extreme party discipline with their votes, and secrets, and corruption?

    I think the party is at least a little like an organized crime syndicate. Bernie is not a made man, and does not want to be.

    Dems are constantly referring to comments by Republicans as “dog whistles.” So clearly they must be using dog whistles too. Here is what Hillary had to say recently about Bernie.

    “He was in Congress for years. He had one senator support him. Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done,” Clinton said in the film, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “He was a career politician. It’s all just baloney, and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it.”

    In an interview published Tuesday about the documentary, Clinton was asked if that assessment of Sanders, I-Vt., still holds: “Yes, it does,” she said.
    Clinton would not say if she was prepared to endorse Sanders should he become the 2020 Democratic nominee, and she went on to criticize the “culture” around Sanders’ supporters.

    “It’s his leadership team. It’s his prominent supporters. It’s his online Bernie Bros and their relentless attacks on lots of his competitors, particularly the women,” she said. “And I really hope people are paying attention to that because it should be worrisome that he has permitted this culture – not only permitted, (he) seems to really be very much supporting it.”

    Bernie is an outsider.

    Another element is that garden variety Dems love to posture and pander about revolutions in America as long as it secures them political power, but it is largely a euphemism. They may or may not want socialism, but they really don’t want a revolution. Bernie really does.

  10. For the vast majority, of course it’s option two. The few others need to accept the reality that their party is socialist and leave it.

    Trump would welcome them- and I think he is making strenuous efforts to win over rank-and-file non-socialist democrats.

    I further think the socialists know this and are terrified that it will work.

    Their worst nightmare is that Trump will succeed as president, rendering their schemes to remake America into Venezuela impossible.

    Hence, the insane and hysterical opposition to anything and everything Trump says and does, far beyond what reality should inspire.

    Bernie is also a threat, for the reasons Neo noted, which appears to be generating a similar reaction.

  11. Are Democratic leaders afraid of Sanders because they don’t want socialism?

    That’s the wrong question. Sanders was notable, ca. 1982, as the mayor who had a subscription to The Militant (and who disdained Michael Harrington, who led one of the three descendants of the old Socialist Party). Steve Sailer speaks of ‘leapfrogging loyalties’ and Thomas Sowell of ‘the one-uppers’. Sanders was among those whose sympathies were with the enemy during the Cold War. However, that was one facet of his general political persona. It wasn’t the dominant feature as it has been with Victor Navasky and his ilk, nor something symbiotic with a general contempt for the world outside one’s immediate circle manifest in such creatures as Barbara Ehrenreich. In the social nexus for which the Democratic Party is the electoral vehicle, this disposition we have reason to believe is now dominant and increasingly public. What’s more, it’s manifest among ordinary Democratic voters of the millennial variety. Look at the roaches Heather Mac Donald had to contend with at Colgate.

  12. At the same time, our adult population is amply populated with people who lack a lively sense that goods and services are produced. They think in terms of budgeting rather than production. My own sense is that such people are more prevalent or more potent than was the case twenty years ago. Someone once said that feminism could be described as a rictus uttering the phrase “I want”. Bernie taps into that sentiment and shares it. They’re dead to the complications and social costs of ramping up the degree to which factors of production and disposable income are allocated according to political decision-making. The other candidates say ‘more’. Sanders says MOAR.

  13. One wonders what ‘Conservatives’ think their ideology (Reagan/Bush/Trump-ian Big Govt. ‘Conservatism’) offers to younger people?

    Why should anyone under the age of 30-35 give you the time of day?

  14. Shane:

    Oh, maybe because older people sometimes have a wisdom born of time and experience that young people lack?

    Also, if you want to know what conservatism might offer young people, perhaps a young conservative would be the one to ask.

  15. Who, Shane, are the scarequoted Conservatives thinking of an ideology? Who is it, I’m asking, you have in mind who fit that bill? Perhaps conservatives don’t think of ideology especially much to begin with, so least of all then, “their” ideology? I don’t know — does Burke, for instance, speak of ideology? Or are we going to name Destutt de Tracy a conservative?

  16. Neo, your second choice implies that Democrats want socialism and we’re somehow afraid that Sanders it revealing our dirty little plans. LOL. Not the case with most of my Democratic friends. Most of my friends do not want Bernie both because he is too far left and because being too far left he cannot win in the General election against Trump. We want someone more sensible and moderate.

    Bernie to me is selling rainbows and unicorns. It’s a fact that he will not be able to implement his plans without a far left House and Senate. And in the case of the Senate you need a filibuster proof Senate, which means 60 or more Democratic Senators who want what Bernie wants. That is not going to happen. Or at least not in 4 years. So if Sanders won it would be a stalemate for most of his big plans. That’s not workable. [Although we would all take Sanders doing nothing over Trump – if anything for nominating judges for the Federal courts and Supreme Court].

    BTW, I took that WaPo test of which candidate is most preferred and out of 20 political positions and I shared only 4 with Bernie. I shared 15 with Deval Patrick – who’s not in the running any longer.

  17. Why should anyone under the age of 30-35 give you the time of day?

    What difference should it make that you’re under 35? You interested in justice and prudence, the closest approximations are delineated here.

  18. There’s a great deal of [redacted] aggression against what Mr. Sailer calls ‘core Americans. The dominant strand in liberal discourse consists of expressions of (and excuses for) this aggression. So much of what animates the portside these days consists of measures which express this aggression and injure the adversary. I think this post-dates Sanders’ personal political education, though it’s not completely foreign to him. He plays to it because he feels the pressure to do so (and no pressure to refrain from so doing).

  19. Wise Europeans don’t want socialism any more, for manifold reasons elucidated by this author, and apparent to anyone with two or more brain cells.

    https://www.city-journal.org/bernie-sanders-socialist-vision

    …
    Europeans, then, having learned that socialism does not work, are trying to narrow our gap with the United States with various reforms—just as Bernie Sanders, 50 years too late, seeks to emulate Europe. Doesn’t Sanders know that his program has been applied in Europe, and failed? He must: and this would mean that his true ambition is not free health care or free college, but a deeper transformation of the United States. Perhaps he hates the free-market society and wants to replace it with a socialist, egalitarian one, overseen by the “tyranny of the benevolent,” which Tocqueville warned against.

    Why would so many American voters find Sanders’s socialism attractive? For the same reasons that socialism was once popular in Europe: the love for equality over individual freedom; the illusion of a safe life, guaranteed by a benevolent state; the allure of transferring personal responsibility to a public nurse. Then as now, these offers exert a strong psychological appeal; the answer to them is reality. Socialism does not work—but perhaps one needs to live through it to be convinced.

    “Brain cells” is a reference as well to this story:
    https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-appears-to-question-nikki-haleys-brains-report-says-haley-shreds-him

  20. Bernie to me is selling rainbows and unicorns.

    You’re confusing him with Booty-gag, who wants to make legal the traffick in hard drugs and talk sex with your nine-year old.

  21. I specifically mention Reagan/Bush/Trump by name and the online wannabe intellectual “sdffer” asks me who I’m referencing, LOL.

  22. Sen. From-NewJoisie-Bob Menendez can’t be construed a Democrat leader as such, but he metaphorically spits on Sanders’ candidacy, and no wonder there.

    He stiffed a pair of teenage hookers in the Dominican Republic. That’s just tacky. Who does he think he is, the Secret Service?

  23. “The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it.

    He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.”

    Adam Smith

  25. I specifically mention Reagan/Bush/Trump by name and the online wannabe intellectual “sdffer” asks me who I’m referencing, LOL.

    He knows perfectly well who they are. He also mixed up all his pronouns so his comment makes no sense.

  26. In ‘Conservatives’ we have a group of people who pay lip-service to the Constitution, liberty, American sovereignty, etc.

    However, they’re (esp. the awful BoomerCons) really nothing more than Israel-first 20th Century Progressives who view military-spending as a kind of Bizzarro World FDR-type jobs-program.

  27. Well Shane, I can’t speak for any of your choices for representative conservatives, so I wonder why you are asking here that anyone should? Reagan didn’t speak of his ideology that I can recollect. Trump doesn’t appear to either possess nor care to possess such a thing. And George Bush? Of him, who especially gives a care?

  28. “Most of my friends do not want Bernie both because he is too far left and because being too far left he cannot win in the General election against Trump. “ Montage

    Too far left? I think not. It’s strictly the latter not the former. As the universal silence among ‘mainstream’ democrats when a “too far left” position is advocated. That speaks volumes. Example; Four PAID Bernie field operatives were recorded on video advocating gulags and killing fields for those who refuse to get with the program. What did we hear in response from democrats… only the sound of crickets chirping. What did we hear from the media and democrats when Bernie refused to reprimand them, much less fire them?

    Utter silence and silence… is consent.

    Correction: Bernie did fire one of the four. Bad “optics” not to, you know.

  29. Where is the ‘wisdom’ to be found amongst BoomerCons?

    You raise children, keep a marriage together, build a business, earn a living for 40 years, there’s the wisdom. Cannot always be precisely articulated.

    Each cohort has different experiences, character, and skill sets, and people born after 1938 or thereabouts have throughout their lives had notable short-comings compared to those who came before. No way around that. However, you skill sets at any point in time do not alter what challenges you face or what truth is. They merely influence how well you meet those challenges.

    However, what’s been remarkable since I came of age is how persistent so many issues are. They don’t go away, perhaps because they’ve been so haphazardly addressed or perhaps because of the human condition.

  30. Reagan didn’t speak of his ideology that I can recollect.

    He spoke of it every time he opened his mouth. He just didn’t delineate it in an expository format.

  32. In ‘Conservatives’ we have a group of people who pay lip-service to the Constitution, liberty, American sovereignty, etc.

    However, they’re (esp. the awful BoomerCons) really nothing more than Israel-first 20th Century Progressives who view military-spending as a kind of Bizzarro World FDR-type jobs-program.

    I can see where this is going, and I’m not interested. I’ve had these discussions before, but they don’t go anywhere, because your interlocutor’s complaints are based on emotions. Rancid emotions.

  33. Reagan used the term ideology every time he opened his mouth? I just don’t recall that.

    I see you’re three sheets to the wind this evening.

    No, Reagan delineated his social vision every time he opened his mouth. In my lifetime, there has been no man in that chair who was clearer about what he thought and why.

  34. “I see you’re three sheets to the wind this evening.”

    Interesting what you can see. Or not at all, as you don’t know what you think you know.

  35. Or not at all, as you don’t know what you think you know.

    What I know is that you’ve been unable to put two coherent sentences together and responded to two posters with non sequiturs. If you’re actually sober, I’d give it up. Cognitive decline has arrived.

  36. Reagan learned and honed his ideological skills while delivering lectures on behalf of the GE corp. as well as during his leadership of the Screen Actors Guild. Here is a description.

    I read a story somewhere about the economics of Reagan’s acting career. He was a B actor but a rather popular one. The studios knocked films out rapidly then, and Reagan may have been able to make 5 or more films in a year, but usually he took jobs in two or three films in the first half of the year and vacationed in the second half.

    The problem was that the highly progressive tax regime of those days meant that working on a 4th or 5th film in a given calendar year would amount to working for the benefit of the government with little left over for yourself. Few are that stupid.

  37. Well then, thanks for your unerring judgement Art Deco. I’ll take it to heart just as soon as you make an effort at understanding.

  38. @ Art Deco

    If I were a ‘Conservative’ I wouldn’t want push-back from actual Right-wingers either, hehehe.

    Ronald Reagan – “I Believe in Amnesty for Illegal Aliens”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ednq_vKPdQE&t=3s

    Ronald Reagan Socialized Medicine in the United States (‘free’ HC for EVERYONE–including illegal aliens–who stumbles into an ER)

    https://www.eclectablog.com/2012/02/ronald-reagan-socialized-medicine-in.html

    The Sad Legacy of Ronald Reagan

    https://libertyunderattack.com/the-sad-legacy-of-ronald-reagan/

    Does it matter that the Reagan legacy is a fraud?

    http://harrybrowne.org/articles/Reagan%27sLegacy.htm

  40. but usually he took jobs in two or three films in the first half of the year and vacationed in the second half.

    He appeared in more films in 1937-40 than he ever did later (about 8 films a year). He made eight feature films in 1941-42, but just one in 1943. He was in uniform during those years and one thing he was assigned to do in the service was make documentary shorts. Either due to service obligations or for some other reason, he made only one feature film over four calendar years (1943-46). He appeared in 20 feature films over the period running from 1947-57. He doubled as president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1947-52 and 1960-1. His work after 1952 was more and more pre-occupied with television appearances and promotional speaking for General Electric. After 1957, he appeared in one more film (as a supporting character and provided narration for one feature and one short, but otherwise confined himself to television. As an actor, he was semi-retired after 1957, making about four appearances on the screen a year.

  41. Under my tenure as President the National Debt TRIPLED, who am I?

    The appropriate measure for assessing policy is the ratio of national debt to domestic product. When you’ve learned that Congress writes appropriations bills, get back to us.

  42. Again, Shane, neither you nor your sources seem to understand how policy is made and what the President can influence and what he cannot.

  47. @ Art Deco

    You are just another Big Govt. Conservative Boomer.

    I’ve destroyed 100’s of your kind in my time.

  49. I’ve destroyed 100’s of your kind in my time.

    We’re all instructed by your self-declared victory, I’m sure.

  50. ‘Shane on February 27, 2020 at 9:27 pm said:
    Does it matter that the Reagan legacy is a fraud?”

    does it matter to you that Obergruppenfuhrer Robert Müller is a German Nazi right out of Triumph of the Will? and that we should have let the Russians destroy west Müllerland like they did to Ost Müllerland und MittleMüllerland considering Müllerism began in a Beer Hall in WestMüllerland instead of sacrificing American lives to the Müllers of WestMüllerland from the Russians?

  51. Shane, you forgot one:

    “The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”

    Ronald Reagan

  52. Shane,

    Stop linking to idiots. From that Harry Browne link…

    “The annual average increase in government during Reagan’s administration was 6.8%, compared with “big government” Bill Clinton’s average annual increase of 3.6%.”

    That’s like saying getting an extra quarter when you have a dollar is better than getting an extra hundred when you’ve got a thousand bucks. Try and make math your friend. Oh, and there’s also that whole “Cold War ending” thing that happened.

    Mike

  54. Here’s an answer.

    https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/02/the-democrats-bernie-dilemma-he-exposes-their-true-character.php

    I think it was Tom Bethell, back when he wrote the must-read Washington column for The American Spectator, who asked the pertinent question when Bernie Sanders was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives under the Socialist Party affiliation in 1990: How will we be able to tell the difference between Bernie’s socialism and the “mainstream” Democratic Party in Washington?

    That illuminating question has become suddenly urgent now that Bernie may be the Democrats’ presidential nominee this year. Bethell’s astute point, 30 years ago, is being borne out today: Bernie is the telos of the modern Democratic Party.

  56. It was always the second.
    The end goal of every leftist is always full blown communism, the only difference between the sects among them is how they intent to get there.

  58. They did pull the mask off – in 2016. They thought they could continue merrily down this road of more centralized gov’t and more utopic plans to build their heaven on earth. And the people noticed.

    Now, they want to put the mask back in place (a bit) so they can get hold of the power once again. THIS time they’ll do it right and actually achieve that “democrats forever” gov’t they’ve been working for.

  59. One wonders what ‘Conservatives’ think their ideology (Reagan/Bush/Trump-ian Big Govt. ‘Conservatism’) offers to younger people?

    An alternative, albeit less than perfect, to the flawed line of thinking described by me here … that is accepted by a majority of Americans as simply The Way Things Are and beyond the need to question:

    https://www.facebook.com/notes/ritchie-the-riveter/the-seven-assumptions-of-the-comfortably-numb/1918369764876760/

    It took me almost fifty years, to realize the problem behind the problems … so why should I think those under 35 have better answers, especially when so many follow in blind SUBMISSION septuagenarians who whisper Utopian nothings into their ears?

  60. The problem is that there are far too many people (takers) who will vote for Bernie only because they see a free ride in their future. This includes, many illegals, the dead and buried, and millions of public school indoctrinated “socialists”.

    None of them ever learned anything about economics nor understand that there really is never a “free” lunch.

    If you give it away you can never satisfy the demand.

    The “government” had to steal from me to give it free to you.

  62. @Shane
    Reagan was not as conservative as I would have liked, nor as some believe he was. You are correct.

    But, he was just the President.
    Also, much like Trump today (who is not conservative*), he was so much better compared to the alternatives: he was for a strong America, he was so very pro-America, and he really did want smaller gov’t. And that put him WAY to the right compared to today’s Dems and a lot of today’s Republicans.

    (* Not to imply Reagan wasn’t conservative at all. He was more conservative than Trump, imo.)

  63. who asked the pertinent question when Bernie Sanders was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives under the Socialist Party affiliation in 1990:

    He was not elected under the ‘Socialist Party’ affiliation. The Debs-Thomas Socialist Party dissolved in 1971. There were three successor organizations, one formed by Max Schachtman, one by Michael Harrington, and one by David McReynolds. Sanders refused to associate with any of them. He was a member of the Liberty Union Party of Vermont and then a civic organization he himself founded which ran candidates in Burlington.

  64. The problem is that there are far too many people (takers) who will vote for Bernie only because they see a free ride in their future. This includes, many illegals, the dead and buried, and millions of public school indoctrinated “socialists”.

    No, that’s not THE problem. It can be a problem under select circumstances. Twenty years ago, the distribution of political preferences among youth (those under 25) were similar to the mean distribution. Over the next eight years, the Democratic Party established an insuperable advantage. Data on political economy do not explain this; it’s a cultural shift. At the same time, Republicans have an advantage among Social Security recipients, something they did not have 35 years ago.

  65. @Art Deco
    it’s a cultural shift
    Yes. Culture is upstream of politics, and they remade the culture into one that includes expecting a free ride (among other things).

    And the Dems have played that culture flute and merrily danced away with our posterity following along behind.

  66. Reagan was not as conservative as I would have liked, nor as some believe he was. You are correct.

    No, Shane is not correct. He’s linking to cranko libertarian literature. He also knows nothing of national income accounting or policy-formation processes.

    Reagan had an animating social vision, a set of goals presupposing an optimal configuration of political forces, and a set of immediate goals given the matrix he actually faced. He also had a personnel system to put kindred spirits in gatekeeper positions where they would do roughly what he wanted without him having to check up on them. He never had a majority in Congress animated by his vision. The closest he came to it was in 1981 and 1982. The Republicans controlled the committee architecture in the Senate from 1981 to 1986, but recall that about 1/4 of the Senate Republican caucus consisted of a mix of liberal Republicans and programmatic and ideological temporizers. There were Democrats who were dissenters in their own caucus too, of course, so their may have been a floor majority in favor of parts of the Reagan program. You didn’t have anything near the degree of party discipline then that you have now.

  67. and they remade the culture into one that includes expecting a free ride (among other things).

    No, that’s not it. You haven’t had a secular decline in the employment-to-population ratio and the share of the non-elderly / non-disabled population collecting cash transfers is currently as low as it has been in sixty years. There’s been a secular increase in the share of the population which has been adjudicated as disabled, but that efflorescence hasn’t been among the young, but among those over 50. The complaint of the young concerns student loan debt, and that complaint is not altogether illegitimate.

  68. IF the dem leaders and supporters thought that the Bolshevik Sanders would prevail against Trump, they would be all in.
    The ONLY reason they fear the Brooklyn Bolshevik (who apparently never earned a penny of income outside of a govt. job) is because they fear he will create a TRump victory landslide.

  69. In re Neo’s original question: I’m not sure if I should be more afraid of Sen. Sanders (and the insane policies he’s eager to push if elected), or of the large and increasingly violent hordes of Bernie Bros (who would certainly be emboldened by his election, whether he overtly leads them or not).

    Both spell chaos for all of us… and the two don’t cancel out, which makes it that much worse.

    I don’t know if rank-and-file Democrats worry about these things. I wish they would. The violent mobs don’t just go home after the victory, putting away their face masks and bicycle locks. They go looking for new targets.

  70. They’re afraid of Sanders because they don’t want socialism. The Dems are basically the party of the elite rich and their minions. They know the others – Sloppy Joe Biden, Fauxchahontas, Mayor Pete, etc – talk about socialism but it’s just a con to get them elected. A quintessential political promise, forgotten 5 mins after the election.

    But they know when Breadline Bernie talks socialism, he MEANS it. It’s not an act for this clown. And that means not only your money is at risk, THEIR money is at risk. Their gravy train of kickbacks and sweetheart deals is threatened.

    Why did super-billionaire Gloomberg stick his 2-billion cents in now? If Breadline Bernie wins, the blood in the water BB smells will be Gloomberg’s.

  71. Ultimately, Bernie’s “sincerity” is the thing that makes him most terrifying. He really does not care if the great unwashed masses end up in dilapidated squalor with unreliable water and power, eating zoo animals. True believers in communism, which Bernie really is, will shrug off whatever violence and atrocious living conditions come with their glorious revolution. The dumbsh1ts willing to vote for him were either never taught this, or they know enough but assume it will never apply to them or anyone they like.

  72. LeClerc on February 28, 2020 at 7:20 am said:
    Here’s an expression of the real anxieties of the MSM by OCD media foot-soldier A.B. Stoddard:

    https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/02/28/dems_cant_wait_until_the_convention_to_stop_sanders_142514.html
    * * *
    Sanders is their Trump, and they MADE him happen (“a choice not a necessity”).
    At least the Republicans didn’t have any forewarning about The Donald’s support level in 2016, but the DNC knew what Sanders almost pulled off that year.

    Maybe it’s time to pass them The Stupid Party Trophy for a while.

    My question: why did both parties allow someone not a member-in-long-time-good-standing (a registered Independent and a very-recently-registered Republican) run on their tickets?

    None of this party affiliation and control are in the Constitution; maybe we should institute a “none of the above” generic third party and run a primary for everyone not a member of one of the big two.

  76. Here’s a possible answer to why young Democrats are not afraid of Bernie’s communism-lite socialism: it’s what they’ve been taught in school to prefer.

    https://thefederalist.com/2020/02/27/dear-joe-scarborough-more-americans-hate-america-than-you-think/

    Not only have American public schools now failed for generations to bestow a knowledge of and respect for their own country’s magnificent political achievements and uniqueness, they have begun open political indoctrination that feeds this ignorance with lies. The United States is now host to large numbers of citizens who believe that theirs is an evil country, with no exposure to facts and viewpoints that contradict this opinion.

    It has been long known that American “education” institutions are spectacular failures at teaching the rising generation about their birthright to self-governance.
    …
    2019’s annual poll from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation found that 37 percent of millennials think the United States is “among the most unequal societies in the world.” Despite their curricula’s obsession with so-called multiculturalism and diversity, they clearly have zero sense of what life is like in most of the world, and how that contrasts with the United States’ singular freedoms and opportunities.

    I guess they never saw that video of grocery stores in the USSR.

  77. AesopFan at 4:00 pm.

    In the 1980s Jewish “refusenics” were allowed to leave the USSR and come to the US. My mother was a member of HIAS, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and would help acclimate the women to the US. She said that without fail, the first time one of the refugee women would walk into a supermarket, she would simply stop and start crying. The abundance and quality were just unimaginable for someone from Russia.

  79. There’s a lot of buzz about Bernie actually having a shot at defeating Trump. I cannot begin to believe this could happen, in spite of his apparent popularity among the young, the stupid, and the parasites. After 2016, with Hillary ordained as the certain winner and a permanent Democratic majority predicted, there isn’t a poll I find credible anymore and that includes the historically reliable ones.

    The numbers in November are going to be interesting, maybe even a revelation. Trump is running on an impressive record, short as it is, while all of the Dem candidates spout the same bullsh!t about what they’re going to do, promising to undo everything Trump has accomplished. Bloomberg is the only one of them that understands that capitalism isn’t going anywhere, but he continues to pander to people who will never vote for him.

    I don’t think people will swap their current circumstances and satisfaction with the way the country is going for a pig-in-a-poke, especially if that pig is talking about taking away their livelihoods, assets, and liberty. The Dems are twisted enough to hope for a black swan event like an economic crisis or a pandemic disease just to unseat Trump. It’s just not a winning platform.

  80. Shane: How do you do, fellow right-winger?

    And if you are not pretending: Your edgelord take on the “libertarian macho flash” routine intimidates absolutely no one, and does not serve to portray you as more principled, more educated, or more right-wing than the next guy.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

↑