Sanders looks like the typical 'leftist' these days, claiming to be anti-establishment but up to the neck in it. If he had some dignity, he would have told their followers not to vote for any candidate as both were really far from his proposala. He showed his true colours when he showed support for Hillary. Another globalist puppet.
@Cierzo: If in life you only have two choices, between something bad and something disasterous, what do you pick? This does not mean that you are complicit in the framing of the choice.
@Burnley123: There are not only two options. Bipartidism is there for a reason,because people choose it. He could have tried to run as an independent, but preferred the warmth and the perks of being in a big party.
@Cierzo: It was a strategic consideration. The electoral system means that you have little other option if you want to compete.
Agree or disagree with his strategy but he is no sell out. Unlike Trump his is likely to further cut us healthcare provision, despite promising not to.
@Burnley123: If Trump betrays his promises and really cuts healthcare (which may not be the same as reversing Obamacare, criticise him, but he must be President first.
How much of Sanders' original program remained in Clinton's to justify his support instead of running on his own?
@Cierzo: Not as much as I would like but enough to make a difference compared to Trump. No tax cuts for the wealthy and no welfare or medical cuts. No wall either. Identity issues too though you would disagree from your standpoint.
In Spain I would be a Podemos supporter but if forced to I would choose PSOE second. I know your electoral system doesn't work like that but you get the point.
@Cierzo: this is not really how it went down. A couple of things:
1. The DNC is not the candidate. The RNC (Republican National Committee) is not the candidate. The RNC leadership, initially, did not support Trump. They fought against him all the way you to the nomination, and beyond. The same goes for the DNC (Democratic National Committee). And, that's just the public record.
The DNC was working against Bernie, for several reasons (and I am going to list only a few):
a. His age (yes, they are biased that way).
b. His position on trade agreements.
c. His adversarial relationship with Wall Street.
d. The head (former now) of the RNC is in AIPACs pocket. Even though Bernie is Jewish, a supporter of Israel, and lived on Kibbutz, during Israel's formative years, he now supports a more balanced 2-state, no settlements in the West Bank, solution.
So, it was more the DNC, than Hillary, and as political as she may be, I doubt that Hillary got directly involved. Just like she probably did not get the question, passed down to a campaign worker, by the DNC (if she did, she certainly did not have a good answer for it).
When Bernie accepted Hillary as a candidate, he did so, on the condition that 4 issues are made part of the Democratic Party Platform:
1. Free education for all, in public institutions.
2. Free healthcare for all, and getting the profit motive out of health insurance.
3. A re-examination of trade agreement, and rejection of TPP agreement.
4. A more balanced position on the Arab-Israeli conflict (detailed above).
Hillary, and the DNC, capitulated. Items #1 and #2, were easy. Item #3, was not without some hesitation, and item #4, with great hesitation.
I caucused for Bernie, in my district. I was not happy to see him lose. I was disappointed in the DNC behavior, but he won, in terms of making his agenda part of the DNC platform. I don't think he compromised, and I don't believe for one second, that he sold out.
@Burnley123: I see you point 🙂. I feel closer to Sanders than Clinton. Hillary is probably all I hate in politics: globalism, strong on identity politics, very progressive and too liberal in economical issues, favouring big Wall Street corporations. At least Sanders does not lool so favourable to them.
@Cierzo: I understand you as well. For me Sanders is a complete win-win being an outright leftist.
Hillary is a mixed big. I hate the neo-liberal economics and globalised free trade but I do agree with her on identity issues. For me economics is utterly central and the no.1 issue though I am also progressive on identity politics and that is also a factor.
For me the problem that the Democrats have had (as with the UK Labour Party) is not that the support liberal identity politics, its that the abandoned representing the working class on economic issues. Sanders himself has made that point. I do like Bernie. For me he is the perfect synergy of pragmatism and idealism. Even while backing Clinton against Trump he was honest about his reasons and I would have done the same.
@Cierzo: Hillary ran on a platform of scrapping the TPP, and re-evaluating NAFTA.
When Trump says (and his followers believe him), that Bill Clinton, created NAFTA, he's lying. NAFTA was negotiated during Presidents Reagan and Bush were in office. It was completed, ratified by Congress, and ready for signature before Bill Clinton was elected. He signed it.
We cannot be an isolationist nations, but NAFTA is 4 decades old, and economists will tell you, that the economy is an evolving, dynamic system, that must be constantly refreshed/corrected.
When Trump tweets that he will impose punitive damages on Toyota, for building a plant in Mexico, he needs to realize a couple of things (prior to tweeting):
1. Toyota has 10 plants in the US. They not only sell in the US, but they also export. Their plants in the US, employ nearly 200,000 people.
2. When President Reagan, tried to impose a "quota" on Japanese cars, in an attempt to save Detroit, it backfired big time. Car prices went up, and Detroit did not make an effort to fix the real problem (quality), jobs were lost and the economy as a whole (other than the arms race started by Reagan), suffered. He was forced to back off.
@Northwest: [quote]When Trump says (and his followers believe him), that Bill Clinton, created NAFTA, he's lying. NAFTA was negotiated during Presidents Reagan and Bush were in office. It was completed, ratified by Congress, and ready for signature when Bill Clinton was elected. He signed it.[/quote]
Yes and no. Most Democrats in Congress voted against NAFTA and the unions were against it. Clinton did have a choice.
Where I do agree with you is that it is disingenuous in the extreme for Trump to pin this entirely on the Clintons. Neo-liberal free-trade was bi-partisan at the time and what the Clintons are guilty of is being too much like the Republicans. They accepted the post-Reagan economics consensus as part of their triangulation electoral strategy. This may/may not have made electoral sense in the 90s but has obviously been a long term disaster for the Democrat base and the American working class generally. Would the Republicans have done it anyway? Yes, absolutely.
@Burnley123: I am both against economical neo-liberalism and liberal identity politics. Actually I don't see them as opposite but as two sides of the same coin.
As you know, for me social matters are even more important than economical ones. That's the main reason of my support for Trump. I agree on his stand against international agreements and his support of national business, but I hate to see former Goldman Sachs guys in his cabinet.
@Cierzo: The two key positions: Secretary of the Treasury and Commerce Department, respectively, Steven Munchin (Goldman Sachs) and Wilbur Ross (Wall Street, billionaire pure Wall Street speculator).
This is after running an anti Wall Street campaign, that his voters believed.
@Burnley123: [quote]The Hillary one I kind of only half-agree with. [/quote]
I tend to cut Hillary some slack. Women are victimized, for what men do. Just because Bill had a zipper problem, and abused power, does not mean that Hillary was in on it.
The reason why I believe that Hillary never received that debate question, is that she delivered a poor answer, during the debate. She is notorious for being prepared, so at a minimum, she would have delivered a less incompetent answer, if she had the question.
However, she is a politician, and she will fib when she thinks she can get away with it, but not to the point of being unethical. I've been up against the former DNC Chair (on a personal level), and I believe that she is capable of acting on her own, for pure political reasons, without Hillary's approval or knowledge.
@Northwest: I don't have a problem with Hillary as a person. So many Americans see her as uniquely dishonest whereas to me she is just another mainstream politician.
I lean towards the radical left and I see her as averagely bad but better than Trump. I wouldn't trust her but the same goes to a lot of people. Do you think that the Democrats would have won with Bernie? He polled well against Trump in the primaries.
@Burnley123: My apologies, I misspoke. Bush signed NAFTA, and Clinton pushed it through Congress. But, as you rightly state, more Republicans than Democrats voted for it, as Unions were against it, and Unions typically vote Democrat (over the past 4 decades).
New Gingrich, helped Clinton pass NAFTA. I recall, at the time, I was at an HP Inkjet factory visit, and someone joked that post NAFTA, the new HP InkJet model, would be a dictation device. You dictate, and it's shipped to Mexico, where a bunch of people will write it down, manually.
