I don’t see it that way at all.
On Mar 27, 2016, at 6:42 AM, Frank Ventura <frank.ventura@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Alice, taken by itself I would agree with you. But, if you read that article
from C&L where Sanders admits to having no plans to take on a republican
congress, Sanders is essentially making Cohen’s case for him.
Frank
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Alice Dampman Humel
Sent: Sunday, March 27, 2016 6:26 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Could President Sanders defeat a Republican
congress
this article glaringly exposes what is wrong with the political
establishment, and, although Cohen’s purpose was obviously to, once again,
diminish Sanders, IMO, he has done the exact opposite…IMO, Cohen and the
political establishment are the ones who have it all ass backwards...
On Mar 26, 2016, at 4:12 PM, Frank Ventura <frank.ventura@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
From:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/01/25/could-president-sanders-defeat-republican-congress/SflnJZh7gwLqHtNEaNOF0N/story.html
Could President Sanders defeat a Republican Congress? - The Boston Globe
Page 2 of 6
Cohen writes:
Surely, because he serves in the Senate, Sanders knows that a public option
in Obamacare didn’t fail because Obama didn’t advocate for it; it failed
because Democrats in Congress refused to go along with it.
Bernie Sanders listened to a question at a town hall apoearance in Iowa
Falls, Iowa, on Monday.
Mark Kauzlarich/REUTERS
Bernie Sanders listened to a question at a town hall apoearance in Iowa
Falls, Iowa, on Monday.
By Michael A. Cohen January 26, 2016
Bernie Sanders on the campaign trail is quite good. His rap on income
inequality and the distorting effects of big money in American politics is
persuasive and effective. But as I listened to him speak in Nashua last week,
I couldn’t help notice there was something missing from his stump speech:
Republicans.
It’s a bit of an odd omission, seeing as Sanders is running for the
Democratic nomination for president. But it also speaks to one of the
fundamental problems with Sanders’ campaign and his theory of political
change.
Now to be sure, it’s not as if Sanders fails to criticize Republicans (he
does); it’s that his focus lies elsewhere.
He says, “What we’ve got to do is create a political revolution which
revitalizes American democracy; which brings millions of young people and
working people into the political process.” In a recent speech on Wall
Street, he listed the iniquities of the One Percent, but never mentioned the
GOP.
This language is at pace with a campaign message that views money, not
Republicans, as the true impediment to transformative political change. But
just a cursory review of the past seven years of American politics suggests
that Sanders is wrong.
First and foremost, to say that nothing real will happen until we have a
political revolution is refuted by history. Since President Obama took
office, Congress passed a health care law that expanded access to 20 million
people, reformed the student loan program, made massive investments in clean
energy and infrastructure, and strengthened financial regulation. What
allowed this to happen wasn’t a political revolution. It also wasn’t even the
election of a Democratic president. The simple fact is that much of this
happened because Democrats, for a brief period, had a filibuster-proof
majority in the Senate and control of the House.
Democrats have enjoyed far less success now that Republicans control
Congress. GOP opposition on Capitol Hill is not simply a result of campaign
donations from Sheldon Adelson, the Koch brothers, and Wall Street — three of
Sanders’ key bogeymen. It wasn’t these folks that had the most to lose from
health care reform; and indeed many on Wall Street and in the business
community disagreed with Republican opposition to immigration and watched in
horror as Republicans in Congress played chicken with the debt limit. The
driver for these efforts is politics and the ideological preferences of
Republican politicians and voters.
But the second problem here is that Sanders, though running as a Democrat, is
diminishing, even disrespecting, the accomplishments of Democrats. Implicit
in Sanders’ call for single-payer health care is that Obamacare is simply
inadequate to the challenge of ensuring greater access to care and cutting
costs. Implicit in Sanders’ call for greater financial regulation is that
Dodd-Frank is inadequate reform. Implicit in Sanders’ call for free higher
education is that Democratic efforts to improve the student loan program and
ensure free tuition for community college is that these measures are
insufficient.
Now of course Sanders would likely suggest that one needs a political
revolution to ensure the kind of changes that go beyond these half-measures.
But if one believes that, why is Sanders running for president?
Surely, because he serves in the Senate, Sanders knows that a public option
in Obamacare didn’t fail because Obama didn’t advocate for it; it failed
because Democrats in Congress refused to go along with it.
If it is Congress — particularly Republicans — that has blocked reform,
shouldn’t Sanders’ focus be on electing more liberal Democrats to Congress?
I asked his campaign how much time he’s spent over the years helping
Democrats get elected to Congress. I didn’t get a response. But it bears
noting that Sanders isn’t even a Democrat, and from my admittedly crude
Google searches I couldn’t find much evidence that he’s actively campaigned
on behalf of Democratic House and Senate candidates.
That stands in contrast to his opponents, Martin O’Malley and Hillary
Clinton. O’Malley criticized Sanders during the last Democratic debate for
not campaigning on behalf of Democratic candidates in South Carolina. For her
part, Clinton campaigned in 20 states at the tail end of the 2014 midterm
election. In fact, while Clinton helped to raise $18 million for Democrats in
2015, Sanders didn’t raise a dime for the DNC — and she’s identified helping
down-ballot Democrats and rebuilding local Democratic parties as top
priorities.
As Sanders, who has been in Washington for decades surely must know, Congress
today is a dysfunctional mess, one in which Republicans block pretty much
every single reform effort proposed by Democrats. Why would President Sanders
be successful in overcoming Republican obstructionism? If he believes the key
to creating a political revolution would come through overturning Citizen
United or ending the influence of super PACS or moving toward public funding
of elections or ending redistricting, how exactly would he accomplish that?
The point of course is that he wouldn’t, not without a solid majority of
Democrats in Congress and even then much of his agenda would be open to
negotiation.
Now, in fairness, lots of presidential candidates talk about legislation on
the campaign trail that has no chance of becoming law. Clinton is just as
guilty of this, but she’s not the one talking about a political revolution or
being indifferent about electing more Democrats to Congress.
If anything, political change in America rarely begins with the actions of
presidents — it usually ends with them, as political leaders, pushed by
activists and social movements, are often the last group to jump on a
political bandwagon. This has been true from enacting laws to protect workers
and the civil rights movement to more modern fights in support of same-sex
marriage.
Sanders’ focus on the presidency as a spark for massive political change is a
particular affliction that affects the Democratic Party, where more emphasis
is placed on electing a president than on the hard work of electing Democrats
not just to Congress but at the state and local level, too.
In a sense, this is what is so troubling about what Sanders is doing. It’s
not just that he is presenting his supporters with a simplistic understanding
of how political change happens, he is merely setting them up for crushing
disappointment. If, by some outside chance, Sanders became president, his
agenda would be dead on arrival. We’d see four more years of gridlock and
four more years of dysfunction. If Sanders really wanted to push his agenda,
he would have spent the last few years electing like-minded Democrats to
Congress. But I suppose that’s less fun than running for president.
Michael A. Cohen’s column appears regularly in the Globe. Foll0w him on
Twitter @speechboy71.
