Frank,
Sanders is the person who started the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He
does have like minded peers. And he's able to work with people who are not
like minded. I mentioned his work with McCain on the bill to help veterans
which was passed. The only thing that sets him apart is that he has less
money than most of them. Read that Matt Tiaby article I just posted. I'm
not one of the young voters he's talking about, but my thinking is similar
to their's. I don't understand what all the DNC panic is about. If what is
most important to them is that a Democrat win, then why such hysteria over
Sanders who might really do better against Trump than Hillary? My suspiscion
is that what they're afraid of is losing all that power that money has
brought to them.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Frank Ventura
Sent: Saturday, March 26, 2016 5:10 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Could President Sanders defeat a Republican
congress
Miriam, you are missing a very important qualifier that the article pointed
out. That is why Sanders hasn't supported "like minded" democrats, with
emphasis on like minded. As the article implies without any allies on
congress Sanders will suffer the same failures as Obama, who had to
constantly compromise to capitulate to members of congress who weren't "like
minded" in either party.
Frank
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Miriam Vieni
Sent: Saturday, March 26, 2016 5:03 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Could President Sanders defeat a Republican
congress
My response would be,
When Democrats had that majority and Obama had a mandate from the people,
why did he remove the public option from his health care legislation? Why
was the stimulus he suggested so small? Why did he choose financial advisors
from Wall Street when there were many, much more progressive economists
available to him? Why didn't he break up the big banks? Why did he go back
on his word to renegotiate NAFTA?
? Why did he continue with even more trade bills that hurt labor? Why didn't
he prosecute the war criminals from the Bush adminisgtration? Why did he
appoint people like Robert Gates and John Brennan, Republicans from the Bush
administration to positions in his administration?
As to the other points, The Affordable Care Act is insufficient. It doesn't
cover everyone. It leaves many people with high deductibles. It provides
different levels of care for people, some of which are inadequate. That is
why single payer health care would be better.
Those of us who are older, remember a time when young people went to college
without paying tuition. What Obama has done is insufficient, better than
nothing, but hardly responsive to the problem.
The Dodd Frank Bill was watered down so it is not as effective as it might
have been and other regulations have not been reinstated.
The author of this article is assuming that if Democrats were in the
majority, they'd pass bills to meet our needs. But the Democrats have become
a Corporate party. Many of them, including my senator and my congresswoman,
vote against the interests of working people a good part of the time. Obama
was planning to cut social security benefits. I heard him say so in a debate
with Romney. Obama cut federal aid to the elderly poor for heating bills.
The Republicans didn't do that. He did it all by himself. He's a Democat for
whom I voted.
What this article is saying is that Sanders is no good because he hasn't
been a loyal Democrat, as if being a loyal Democrat were synonamous with
being concerned with the welfare of the 99%. That stopped being true when
Bill Clinton became President and The New Democrats were born.
Miriam
________________________________
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Frank Ventura
Sent: Saturday, March 26, 2016 4:13 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Could President Sanders defeat a Republican
congress
From:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/01/25/could-president-sanders-defea
t-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.
