JEDIYoda
Lifer
Which Sanders??? Bernie or Colonel Sanders?
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The Official If Bernie Sanders wins the nomination thread.....
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alcoholbob
Diamond Member
Even Bloomberg--someone arguably with little reason to be charitable--said Sanders would have won in 2016.
woolfe9998
Lifer
Because many voters don't view those policies, or any policies which we have implemented in the past and are now a fact of life, as socialism. The problem with "socialism" in a presidential election isn't about substantive policies. It's a branding issue. Older voters in particular associate "socialism" with "communism" and that means the USSR and "Red China." As an attack line, it works. That's why when you advocate socialist policies, you don't call it "socialism."
blankslate
Diamond Member
Which is why Bernie should have referred to himself as an FDR democrat from the beginning. As his economic policies most closely align with FDR's New Deal as much as anything else from U.S. history. FDR was pushed quite firmly in the economic socialist direction by his wife as I understand it.
_____________
woolfe9998
Lifer
Yes, that would have a good way to self-brand. But we're stuck with what he chose.
Younger voters don't mind it at all, in part because they didn't live through the cold war. But older voters are going to have a problem with it.
Blackjack200
Lifer
It seems like getting the nation over a fear of socialism is a necessary and rather trivial hill that will have to be climbed. If Sanders is elected and delivers on his promise, then we can say "look what socialism has done for you!"
Sanders's national campaign since 2016 has consistently gone against conventional political wisdom in its messaging and political positioning, and in doing so has changed the political center of gravity. I think this is a very good thing.
Sanders's national campaign since 2016 has consistently gone against conventional political wisdom in its messaging and political positioning, and in doing so has changed the political center of gravity. I think this is a very good thing.
BonzaiDuck
Lifer
Hollywood has tapped Harrison Ford and some thespian canines for the remake of a classic story -- "The Call of the Wild" -- based on Jack London's novel. Studying or reviewing London's life, how he was raised by a freed slave named Virginia Prentiss, his brief exploits as an oyster pirate with a sail-boat named the "Razzle Dazzle" funded by Prentiss, his short tenure at UC Berkeley leading to his sojourn in Alaska -- is a real eye-opener. One of his novels -- "Martin Eden" -- is autobiographical. Just the first few chapters provide a sense of social class in 19th-century San Francisco through London's eyes. By the way -- London had a dog named Rollo.
I suggest any and all should read the following essay he wrote in 1905: "How I Became a Socialist". His "socialist" aspirations were almost pre-FDR, and modest by today's standards in widely-accepted opinions of what government should properly do.
Here it is.
How I Became A Socialist
Jack London
(1905)
It is quite fair to say that I became a Socialist in a fashion somewhat similar to the way in which the Teutonic pagans became Christians--it was hammered into me. Not only was I not looking for Socialism at the time of my conversion, but I was fighting it. I was very young and callow, did not know much of anything, and though I had never even heard of a school called "Individualism," I sang the paean of the strong with all my heart.
This was because I was strong myself. By strong I mean that I had good health and hard muscles, both of which possessions are easily accounted for. I had lived my childhood on California ranches, my boyhood hustling newspapers on the streets of a healthy Western city, and my youth on the ozone-laden waters of San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. I loved life in the open, and I toiled in the open, at the hardest kinds of work. Learning no trade, but drifting along from job to job, I looked on the world and called it good, every bit of it. Let me repeat, this optimism was because I was healthy and strong, bothered with neither aches nor weaknesses, never turned down by the boss because I did not look fit, able always to get a job at shovelling coal, sailorizing, or manual labor of some sort.
And because of all this, exulting in my young life, able to hold my own at work or fight, I was a rampant individualist. It was very natural. I was a winner. Wherefore I called the game, as I saw it played, or thought I saw it played, a very proper game for MEN. To be a MAN was to write man in large capitals on my heart. To adventure like a man, and fight like a man, and do a man's work (even for a boy's pay)--these were things that reached right in and gripped hold of me as no other thing could. And I looked ahead into long vistas of a hazy and interminable future, into which, playing what I conceived to be MAN'S game, I should continue to travel with unfailing health, without accidents, and with muscles ever vigorous. As I say, this future was interminable. I could see myself only raging through life without end like one of Nietzsche's blond-beasts, lustfully roving and conquering by sheer superiority and strength.
As for the unfortunates, the sick, and ailing, and old, and maimed, I must confess I hardly thought of them at all, save that I vaguely felt that they, barring accidents, could be as good as I if they wanted to real hard, and could work just as well. Accidents? Well, they represented FATE, also spelled out in capitals, and there was no getting around FATE. Napoleon had had an accident at Waterloo, but that did not dampen my desire to be another and later Napoleon. Further, the optimism bred of a stomach which could digest scrap iron and a body which flourished on hardships did not permit me to consider accidents as even remotely related to my glorious personality.
I hope I have made it clear that I was proud to be one of Nature's strong-armed noblemen. The dignity of labor was to me the most impressive thing in the world. Without having read Carlyle, or Kipling, I formulated a gospel of work which put theirs in the shade. Work was everything. It was sanctification and salvation. The pride I took in a hard day's work well done would be inconceivable to you. It is almost inconceivable to me as I look back upon it. I was as faithful a wage slave as ever capitalist exploited. To shirk or malinger on the man who paid me my wages was a sin, first, against myself, and second, against him. I considered it a crime second only to treason and just about as bad.
In short, my joyous individualism was dominated by the orthodox bourgeois ethics. I read the bourgeois papers, listened to the bourgeois preachers, and shouted at the sonorous platitudes of the bourgeois politicians. And I doubt not, if other events had not changed my career, that I should have evolved into a professional strike-breaker, (one of President Eliot's American heroes), and had my head and my earning power irrevocably smashed by a club in the hands of some militant trades-unionist.
Just about this time, returning from a seven months' voyage before the mast, and just turned eighteen, I took it into my head to go tramping. On rods and blind baggages I fought my way from the open West where men bucked big and the job hunted the man, to the congested labor centres of the East, where men were small potatoes and hunted the job for all they were worth. And on this new blond-beast adventure I found myself looking upon life from a new and totally different angle. I had dropped down from the proletariat into what sociologists love to call the "submerged tenth," and I was startled to discover the way in which that submerged tenth was recruited.
I found there all sorts of men, many of whom had once been as good as myself and just as blond-beast; sailor-men, soldier-men, labor-men, all wrenched and distorted and twisted out of shape by toil and hardship and accident, and cast adrift by their masters like so many old horses. I battered on the drag and slammed back gates with them, or shivered with them in box cars and city parks, listening the while to life-histories which began under auspices as fair as mine, with digestions and bodies equal to and better than mine, and which ended there before my eyes in the shambles at the bottom of the Social Pit.
And as I listened my brain began to work. The woman of the streets and the man of the gutter drew very close to me. I saw the picture of the Social Pit as vividly as though it were a concrete thing, and at the bottom of the Pit I saw them, myself above them, not far, and hanging on to the slippery wall by main strength and sweat. And I confess a terror seized me. What when my strength failed? when I should be unable to work shoulder to shoulder with the strong men who were as yet babes unborn? And there and then I swore a great oath. It ran something like this: All my days I have worked hard with my body, and according to the number of days I have worked, by just that much am I nearer the bottom of the Pit. I shall climb out of the Pit, but not by the muscles of my body shall I climb out. I shall do no more hard work, and may God strike me dead if I do another day's hard work with my body more than I absolutely have to do. And I have been busy ever since running away from hard work.
Incidentally, while tramping some ten thousand miles through the United States and Canada, I strayed into Niagara Falls, was nabbed by a fee-hunting constable, denied the right to plead guilty or not guilty, sentenced out of hand to thirty days' imprisonment for having no fixed abode and no visible means of support, handcuffed and chained to a bunch of men similarly circumstanced, carted down country to Buffalo, registered at the Erie County Penitentiary, had my head clipped and my budding mustache shaved, was dressed in convict stripes, compulsorily vaccinated by a medical student who practised on such as we, made to march the lock-step, and put to work under the eyes of guards armed with Winchester rifles--all for adventuring in blond-beastly fashion. Concerning further details deponent sayeth not, though he may hint that some of his plethoric national patriotism simmered down and leaked out of the bottom of his soul somewhere--at least, since that experience he finds that he cares more for men and women and little children than for imaginary geographical lines.
* * * * * * *
To return to my conversion. I think it is apparent that my rampant individualism was pretty effectively hammered out of me, and something else as effectively hammered in. But, just as I had been an individualist without knowing it, I was now a Socialist without knowing it, withal, an unscientific one. I had been reborn, but not renamed, and I was running around to find out what manner of thing I was. I ran back to California and opened the books. I do not remember which ones I opened first. It is an unimportant detail anyway. I was already It, whatever It was, and by aid of the books I discovered that It was a Socialist. Since that day I have opened many books, but no economic argument, no lucid demonstration of the logic and inevitableness of Socialism affects me as profoundly and convincingly as I was affected on the day when I first saw the walls of the Social Pit rise around me and felt myself slipping down, down, into the shambles at the bottom.
THE END.
I suggest any and all should read the following essay he wrote in 1905: "How I Became a Socialist". His "socialist" aspirations were almost pre-FDR, and modest by today's standards in widely-accepted opinions of what government should properly do.
Here it is.
How I Became A Socialist
Jack London
(1905)
It is quite fair to say that I became a Socialist in a fashion somewhat similar to the way in which the Teutonic pagans became Christians--it was hammered into me. Not only was I not looking for Socialism at the time of my conversion, but I was fighting it. I was very young and callow, did not know much of anything, and though I had never even heard of a school called "Individualism," I sang the paean of the strong with all my heart.
This was because I was strong myself. By strong I mean that I had good health and hard muscles, both of which possessions are easily accounted for. I had lived my childhood on California ranches, my boyhood hustling newspapers on the streets of a healthy Western city, and my youth on the ozone-laden waters of San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. I loved life in the open, and I toiled in the open, at the hardest kinds of work. Learning no trade, but drifting along from job to job, I looked on the world and called it good, every bit of it. Let me repeat, this optimism was because I was healthy and strong, bothered with neither aches nor weaknesses, never turned down by the boss because I did not look fit, able always to get a job at shovelling coal, sailorizing, or manual labor of some sort.
And because of all this, exulting in my young life, able to hold my own at work or fight, I was a rampant individualist. It was very natural. I was a winner. Wherefore I called the game, as I saw it played, or thought I saw it played, a very proper game for MEN. To be a MAN was to write man in large capitals on my heart. To adventure like a man, and fight like a man, and do a man's work (even for a boy's pay)--these were things that reached right in and gripped hold of me as no other thing could. And I looked ahead into long vistas of a hazy and interminable future, into which, playing what I conceived to be MAN'S game, I should continue to travel with unfailing health, without accidents, and with muscles ever vigorous. As I say, this future was interminable. I could see myself only raging through life without end like one of Nietzsche's blond-beasts, lustfully roving and conquering by sheer superiority and strength.
As for the unfortunates, the sick, and ailing, and old, and maimed, I must confess I hardly thought of them at all, save that I vaguely felt that they, barring accidents, could be as good as I if they wanted to real hard, and could work just as well. Accidents? Well, they represented FATE, also spelled out in capitals, and there was no getting around FATE. Napoleon had had an accident at Waterloo, but that did not dampen my desire to be another and later Napoleon. Further, the optimism bred of a stomach which could digest scrap iron and a body which flourished on hardships did not permit me to consider accidents as even remotely related to my glorious personality.
I hope I have made it clear that I was proud to be one of Nature's strong-armed noblemen. The dignity of labor was to me the most impressive thing in the world. Without having read Carlyle, or Kipling, I formulated a gospel of work which put theirs in the shade. Work was everything. It was sanctification and salvation. The pride I took in a hard day's work well done would be inconceivable to you. It is almost inconceivable to me as I look back upon it. I was as faithful a wage slave as ever capitalist exploited. To shirk or malinger on the man who paid me my wages was a sin, first, against myself, and second, against him. I considered it a crime second only to treason and just about as bad.
In short, my joyous individualism was dominated by the orthodox bourgeois ethics. I read the bourgeois papers, listened to the bourgeois preachers, and shouted at the sonorous platitudes of the bourgeois politicians. And I doubt not, if other events had not changed my career, that I should have evolved into a professional strike-breaker, (one of President Eliot's American heroes), and had my head and my earning power irrevocably smashed by a club in the hands of some militant trades-unionist.
Just about this time, returning from a seven months' voyage before the mast, and just turned eighteen, I took it into my head to go tramping. On rods and blind baggages I fought my way from the open West where men bucked big and the job hunted the man, to the congested labor centres of the East, where men were small potatoes and hunted the job for all they were worth. And on this new blond-beast adventure I found myself looking upon life from a new and totally different angle. I had dropped down from the proletariat into what sociologists love to call the "submerged tenth," and I was startled to discover the way in which that submerged tenth was recruited.
I found there all sorts of men, many of whom had once been as good as myself and just as blond-beast; sailor-men, soldier-men, labor-men, all wrenched and distorted and twisted out of shape by toil and hardship and accident, and cast adrift by their masters like so many old horses. I battered on the drag and slammed back gates with them, or shivered with them in box cars and city parks, listening the while to life-histories which began under auspices as fair as mine, with digestions and bodies equal to and better than mine, and which ended there before my eyes in the shambles at the bottom of the Social Pit.
And as I listened my brain began to work. The woman of the streets and the man of the gutter drew very close to me. I saw the picture of the Social Pit as vividly as though it were a concrete thing, and at the bottom of the Pit I saw them, myself above them, not far, and hanging on to the slippery wall by main strength and sweat. And I confess a terror seized me. What when my strength failed? when I should be unable to work shoulder to shoulder with the strong men who were as yet babes unborn? And there and then I swore a great oath. It ran something like this: All my days I have worked hard with my body, and according to the number of days I have worked, by just that much am I nearer the bottom of the Pit. I shall climb out of the Pit, but not by the muscles of my body shall I climb out. I shall do no more hard work, and may God strike me dead if I do another day's hard work with my body more than I absolutely have to do. And I have been busy ever since running away from hard work.
Incidentally, while tramping some ten thousand miles through the United States and Canada, I strayed into Niagara Falls, was nabbed by a fee-hunting constable, denied the right to plead guilty or not guilty, sentenced out of hand to thirty days' imprisonment for having no fixed abode and no visible means of support, handcuffed and chained to a bunch of men similarly circumstanced, carted down country to Buffalo, registered at the Erie County Penitentiary, had my head clipped and my budding mustache shaved, was dressed in convict stripes, compulsorily vaccinated by a medical student who practised on such as we, made to march the lock-step, and put to work under the eyes of guards armed with Winchester rifles--all for adventuring in blond-beastly fashion. Concerning further details deponent sayeth not, though he may hint that some of his plethoric national patriotism simmered down and leaked out of the bottom of his soul somewhere--at least, since that experience he finds that he cares more for men and women and little children than for imaginary geographical lines.
* * * * * * *
To return to my conversion. I think it is apparent that my rampant individualism was pretty effectively hammered out of me, and something else as effectively hammered in. But, just as I had been an individualist without knowing it, I was now a Socialist without knowing it, withal, an unscientific one. I had been reborn, but not renamed, and I was running around to find out what manner of thing I was. I ran back to California and opened the books. I do not remember which ones I opened first. It is an unimportant detail anyway. I was already It, whatever It was, and by aid of the books I discovered that It was a Socialist. Since that day I have opened many books, but no economic argument, no lucid demonstration of the logic and inevitableness of Socialism affects me as profoundly and convincingly as I was affected on the day when I first saw the walls of the Social Pit rise around me and felt myself slipping down, down, into the shambles at the bottom.
THE END.
Jaskalas
Lifer
Right, but anything that needs to be explained is going to suffer in marketability.
blankslate
Diamond Member
Good News Everyone!
Democratic Leaders Willing to Risk Party Damage to Stop Bernie Sanders From the New York Times... by Lisa Lerer and Reid J. Epstein
So don't worry snowflakes Bernie hasn't won South Carolina and may not win it and we don't know how Super Tuesday will turn out. as long as Bernie doesn't get a majority of Delegates you're safe from the bad old socialist who wants to taker all your stuff.
Remember if you're the shill I don't reply to you. so maybe you might be wondering if I haven't replied to you in half a year or so....
*edited 4 grammar*
________
Democratic Leaders Willing to Risk Party Damage to Stop Bernie Sanders From the New York Times... by Lisa Lerer and Reid J. Epstein
So don't worry snowflakes Bernie hasn't won South Carolina and may not win it and we don't know how Super Tuesday will turn out. as long as Bernie doesn't get a majority of Delegates you're safe from the bad old socialist who wants to taker all your stuff.
Remember if you're the shill I don't reply to you. so maybe you might be wondering if I haven't replied to you in half a year or so....
*edited 4 grammar*
________
Last edited:
hal2kilo
Lifer
I find this is strangely similar to getting marijuana legalized. It has not happened over night and it's still slowing moving through the states. People realized that the world did not go to shit because marijuana was legalized. Actually, nothing changes. Accept apparently the largest growing segment is the 65 and older crowd. Same thing will happen with more socialized programs that makes sense for society as a whole.
Vic
Elite Member
I've changed my mind and decided the Dems should run Bernie. He's not my ideal candidate, largely because I am an unabashed free market capitalist, but... he has the momentum and looks to win the delegates, it'll hurt the Dems if they go against the voters, but most importantly, we don't have a capitalist in the White House right now anyway. We have a corrupt big govt authoritarian who openly supports cronyism, mercantilism, and command economy policies. Now I don't expect Bernie to be much better in most of those areas, but he's certainly not going to be any worse, and for sure won't be anywhere near as corrupt. And if we're going to have a command economy, it may as well be one that serves the People rather than the Establishment cronies.
Plus, I've been hearing for 3 years now that Trump is sweet revenge for that black guy. Well, seems to me that Bernie will serve quite well as revenge for Trump. Gotta keep things in balance.
So BernieBros.. have at it. But don't fuck it up.
Plus, I've been hearing for 3 years now that Trump is sweet revenge for that black guy. Well, seems to me that Bernie will serve quite well as revenge for Trump. Gotta keep things in balance.
So BernieBros.. have at it. But don't fuck it up.
ivwshane
Lifer
Everyone seems to forget that it's Congress that makes the laws so all of Bernie's "extreme" ideas would have to get past Congress first. I don't see Congress passing huge reform legislation on anything and Bernie isn't NOT going to sign any bills that are better than what we have but not to the "extreme" that he wants.
Vic
Elite Member
I agree, and that was part of my decision. Even Trump couldn't get even a tenth of all the crazy shit he promised on the campaign trail done.. even with his party controlling the entire govt.
I do wish the BernieBros would drop all the Socialist bullshit and focus on the real issues. Such as that our healthcare system is already 50% state funded, and that for the half of us who can afford private insurance, it costs more than $1,500/mo per household on average. And then you have to pay excessive copays and deductibles just to use what you already paid $1,500/mo for. Or that cancelling ALL of the outstanding student loan debt would cost us considerably less than what we paid to rebuild Iraq after we had paid even more to blow it up.
We're already paying those huge numbers we supposedly can't afford. And we should talking about that IMO.
Fanatical Meat
Lifer
While I have my concerns we are living in strange unpredictable times.
I said exactly what you said about the President in 2016.
I'm not convinced. At this point, anyone that has been paying attention at all knows Sanders uses the word socialist to describe himself. In some ways, I wonder if he'll end up being better off for it. The republicans will throw that word at him, but they would throw it at any candidate, and in some ways, I think Bernie already accepting the term could take away the power of the label. I think he'll go into the general with people already accepting that is what he is.
Bernie isn't a socialist.
Opinion | Bernie Sanders Isn’t a Socialist (Published 2020)
But he plays one on TV. That’s a problem.
The thing is, Bernie Sanders isn’t actually a socialist in any normal sense of the term. He doesn’t want to nationalize our major industries and replace markets with central planning; he has expressed admiration, not for Venezuela, but for Denmark. He’s basically what Europeans would call a social democrat — and social democracies like Denmark are, in fact, quite nice places to live, with societies that are, if anything, freer than our own.
He did? Estimates under his plan generally fall around similar cost to current system, so it's really just about where the shift in burden goes.
Bernie Sanders Official Website
Change will never come without political participation. Join the political revolution today.
berniesanders.com
- No networks, no premiums, no deductibles, no copays, no surprise bills.
He did?
Sanders is right: Republican tax cuts cost more than forgiving student debt
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has joined the Democratic presidential candidate in making a contrast with the 2017 law
I wouldn't be surprised if they decide to let the ship sink vs. having Bernie. This may be one reason why Russia wants to back him, since it would rock the Democratic party big time if they have another establishment candidate lose twice to Trump, especially if they take away the nom from Bernie. It's obvious why the Democrats will do this if he gets close. He would clean house and get rid of the consulting culture and all the other stuff that affects their earnings/employment opportunities.
Bitek
Lifer
Ugh .. they better not.
F the deficit. If Rs don't like it they can vote to reverse their tax cuts
pcgeek11
Lifer
Fair enough. I guess we shall see.
If Bernie is elected, I will support him and wish him well on healing the US from the incessant BS.
ch33zw1z
Lifer
Yea, cause this is credible
Bitek
Lifer
This point has been made by many.
It speaks not so much to proper description of Bernie's policies, but rather how he uses the term to intentionally to create a brand as a curmudgeon and outsider for himself.
He also isn't actually a member of the democratic party. Officially he's kept himself independent.
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