A sample.
It’s almost over for Hillary
It would be hard to overstate what Bernie Sanders has already achieved in his campaign for president, or the obstacles he’s had to surmount in order to achieve it.
Not only has he turned a planned Hillary Clinton coronation into an exercise in grass-roots democracy, he’s reset the terms of the debate.
We are edging closer to the national conversation we so desperately need to have.
If we get there, all credit goes to Bernie.
. . . .
There is no Clinton firewall.
At most, 10 states are out of Sanders’ reach and public opinion is never static.
Nor does she have a better “ground game.”
Real grass-roots organizations like the Working Families Party, MoveOn.org and Democracy for America let members guide endorsements.
(Sanders’ support in each of those groups was at or above 85 percent)
Such groups are building the movement Sanders speaks of in every speech.
Building a movement is like wiring a house for electricity.
You can buy the most expensive lamps in the store but with no electricity, when you hit the switch the lights don’t go on.
It takes real conviction to fuel grass-roots politics.
In Iowa, Sanders ran 5 points ahead of late polls.
It won’t be the last time it happens.
. . . .
If you strip away all the nonsense about polls, money, firewalls and ground games, Clinton’s left with two arguments, neither one pretty.
One is that Sanders is too far left.
Pundits dismiss his polls by repeating her “wait till the Republicans get ahold of him” line.
And they’ll say what?
That he’s old?
Jewish?
A socialist?
Everybody already knows and anyone who’d even think of voting Democratic is already down with it or soon could be.
The “socialist” tag needs explaining, but so do “corrupt” and “fascist.”
Both parties’ frontrunners carry baggage.
For my money, Bernie’s is the lightest.
As for the notion that voters can’t see that paying $1,000 in taxes beats paying $5,000 in health insurance premiums, it is an insult to the American people.
The core of Clinton’s realpolitik brief pertains not to electability but to governance.
Her point is that Sanders is naïve.
She says none of his proposals can get though a Republican Congress.
She strongly implies that he’d roll back Obamacare, a charge that is false, cynical and so nonsensical she’ll have to stop making it soon.
She says she has a plan to get to universal health care—she doesn’t—and that she’ll do it by working “in partnership” with the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.
Who’s being naïve here?
A Republican Congress won’t pass any of her ideas either.
The only way to get real change is to elect Democrats to Congress and have a grass-roots movement strong enough to keep the heat on them.
Nor will insurers cough up a dime of profit without a fight.
Vowing to spare us a “contentious debate” over single-payer care she ignores the admonition of Frederick Douglass; “Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will.”
There has been a lot of talk lately about what a progressive is.
Here’s a hint: if you think Douglass is wrong, you might not be one.
. . . .
In the 1990s a near bipartisan consensus celebrated a new age of globalization and information technology in which technology and trade spur growth that in turn fosters a broad and inclusive prosperity.
Government’s job is to deregulate finance and trade and work with business in ‘public private partnerships’ for progress.
Twenty years on, Hillary still sees the world through the rose-colored glasses of that ’90s consensus. Not Bernie.
He sees that in 2016 rising tides don’t even lift most boats, that growth comes at a steep price when it comes at all, and that new technology cost more jobs than it creates.
He understands that when jobs flow to countries with weak governments and low wages, the American middle class can’t get a raise.
He sees that public-private partnership meant pay-to-play politics, and that the whole system runs not on innovation but corruption.
My guess is the middle class sees what he sees and wants what he wants: a revolution.
If he can continue to drive the debate, they may get one.
Read it.
The details are damning.
An open letter to older women voting for Hillary, from a younger woman voting for Bernie
Everything you’re telling us now goes against everything you’ve taught us before, everything you seemed to stand for when you were young.
Asking women to vote for Hillary based on her gender rather than policy is sexist.
Telling women they’ll to go to hell if they don’t vote for Hillary is evil.
Telling women that they are only voting for Bernie to impress guys tells us you no longer respect women.
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