Excellent column on Sanders for VP

haymarket said:

For a few weeks now I have been edging closer and closer to the idea that the Democratic Party should unite behind a ticket of Clinton & Sanders to preserve party unity and win the November election. Today, we have an excellent column from Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal in which she explores the case for such a ticket. In addition ot the obvious short term advantages, she has some very insightful observations about both parties and their future.

Clinton-Sanders: Maybe That?s the Ticket - WSJ

Should Sanders continue to win, especially if he wins in California, this only becomes more and more the realistic way to go the same way that JFK picked his hated opposite Lyndon Johnson in 1960 and thereby won the election.

Your comments and observations are encouraged.

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So I read through this a few days back and I've been rolling it around in my head since then. I think I've figured out where I stand a little better. I would accept this, and Bernie might as well, under certain conditions. Shillary would have to agree to support Bernie in a crusade. Bernie could cave on free college, tax the rich, minimum wage, and UHC. I would accept that if he took VP and used every tool available, including the support of Shillary (part of the bargain), to overhaul campaign finance and money in politics in general. If he could take on corruption in general as well that'd be a bonus, they are pretty closely related. Government waste would fit in nicely as well. But I think that's what America really needs right now, more than anything. We really need to clean our own house, and I could see a particularly active and effective VP running on that theme for 4-8 years, using the high profile office in addition to the base of support he's built up to do just that. It would balance Shillary's negatives in a way that would make many many people far less unhappy to vote for her, without Bernie betraying everything he stands for and becoming part of the machine.

Honestly though, this is probably less likely than him just walking out of the convention as the nominee.

RabidAlpaca said:

Hillary Clinton who sells herself to corporations like a cheap whore

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Ah, the casual misogyny of the Bernie Bro.

Greenbeard said:

Ah, the casual misogyny of the Bernie Bro.

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Hillary and her husband have used their political power to make themselves astronomically rich, which they then use to increase their political power so that they can increase their wealth. Removing money from politics is my #1 issue, and any politician that sells his or her power is a cheap whore. You can feel free to dismiss that fact with lazy one-liners all you please.

Bernie is great because he alone will assure Hillary losing the election. Ha Ha

RabidAlpaca said:

Hillary and her husband have used their political power to make themselves astronomically rich, which they then use to increase their political power so that they can increase their wealth. Removing money from politics is my #1 issue, and any politician that sells his or her power is a cheap whore. You can feel free to dismiss that fact with lazy one-liners all you please.

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Spare me the phony self-righteousness. Every Clinton appointee on the SCOTUS opposed Citizens United. Hillary's nominees will as well. Trump's nominees will preserve it. She's calling for the same disclosure rules and small donor match system Bernie is.

It's not hard to spot those folks who are more interested in the vanity of their own (imagined) purity than actually making progress on issues. They're generally the ones willing to do active damage to their causes so they can go on explaining to you how important the cause is to them.

Greenbeard said:

Ah, the casual misogyny of the Bernie Bro.

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...........Since when can't males be prostitutes?

RabidAlpaca said:

It's not about ****-blocking Hillary Clinton, it's about voting for the candidate that best represents my beliefs. I guess for someone like yourself without any principles or convictions that's extremely hard to comprehend. Hillary is absolutely horrible on over half of my top issues, and Trump is absolutely horrible on the other half. I have never, at any point, been a Hillary supporter or a Democrat, so I don't owe you or her a single ****ing thing.

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I have principles and I have convictions...as much as you have and of as fine a quality as you apparently think yours are.

I have never suggested you owe Hillary anything. In fact, I have suggested that you do your best to see that she not win this election.

iguanaman said:

So which of the beliefs that I posted about Hilary do you disagree with so much that you cannot vote for her? Here they are again...

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The deal breaker is her stance on guns, specifically being able to sue gun manufacturers for customers misusing their product. As Sanders has pointed out, that's just a backdoor way of banning guns and makes as much moral sense as suing Ford for deaths caused by drunk driving.

haymarket said:

For a few weeks now I have been edging closer and closer to the idea that the Democratic Party should unite behind a ticket of Clinton & Sanders to preserve party unity and win the November election. Today, we have an excellent column from Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal in which she explores the case for such a ticket. In addition ot the obvious short term advantages, she has some very insightful observations about both parties and their future.

Clinton-Sanders: Maybe That?s the Ticket - WSJ

Should Sanders continue to win, especially if he wins in California, this only becomes more and more the realistic way to go the same way that JFK picked his hated opposite Lyndon Johnson in 1960 and thereby won the election.

Your comments and observations are encouraged.

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I think it would be ideal and form the most perfect union.

The dems have two extraordinary candidates.

FieldTheorist said:

That's not exactly a fair point, but contextually it is a point worth making. Sanders is a socialist, but his stated presidential policies are Social Democratic policies, not democratic socialist. The reason for this is fairly obvious, which is that he's pushing what he thinks that the American people are ready for and will be willing to fight for. The most important, and I agree with him, are that we need to be fighting for education, healthcare, and democracy to begin combating income inequality with some level of class consciousness. Those are at the top of the list. The things that I listed elsewhere (I can't remember the thread, but it includes putting unions in partial control of all corporations,

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LOL.

and having government incentivizes for worker collectives

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The governmental sector already has the highest concentration of labor cartels.

FDR opposed public sector labor cartels, one of the few things he was dead on correct about. The first thing we should do is abolish public-sector unions altogether.

That also being said, the US is firmly and loudly supportive of Social Democratic principles, and Millennials are on the cusp of Social Democrat and Democratic Socialist, proper. 50% of US Millennials are anti-capitalists, some 30% are socialists, and 6% refer to themselves as Communists. So conservatives are one group, but voting-age Millennials are 40 million Americans. So it seems like it won't be Sanders, but there will be a Reagan/FDR-level change in the country to restore and expand the New Deal, and start having discussions about what kind of a country we want moving forward. It's literally just a matter of time.

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Millennials will wake up to the sickness of labor unions. The global economic conditions are not conducive to the backward, status-quo-clinging union entitlement mentality. There is far too much international competition and too much momentum toward free trade for unions to be anything other than a parasite that quickly kills its host, and consequently itself.

Neomalthusian said:

There is far too much international competition and too much momentum toward free trade

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I agree.

You of course didn't mean this, but this is the only thing I can agree with in your post. You seem to confuse "This is how the economy is today" with "This economy is good." There's some tens of millions of Americans who don't agree with you.

Greenbeard said:

Ah, the casual misogyny of the Bernie Bro.

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*yawn* Partisan hackery at it's finest.

Dion said:

I think it would be ideal and form the most perfect union.

The dems have two extraordinary candidates.

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I agree: one is extraordinarily principled and courageous; the other is extraordinarily Machiavellian and corrupt. I think it's obvious which is which.


As to the subject itself, Bernie would never agree to running on the ticket with her as an ornamental figurehead marginalized and divorced from real power in the Senate unless Clinton committed to substantial portions of his platform, as he should.


Iguanaman's graphic does serious injustice to the substantial differential between Hillary and Bernie on money in politics, and is a gross oversimplification: https://www.pastemagazine.com/artic...intons-plan-to-reform-campaign-finance-i.html

FieldTheorist said:

I agree.

You of course didn't mean this, but this is the only thing I can agree with in your post. You seem to confuse "This is how the economy is today" with "This economy is good." There's some tens of millions of Americans who don't agree with you.

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There are tens of millions of Americans who disagree with any given American. "Putting unions in partial control of all corporations" is one of the most disagreeable and anti-American notions imaginable.

Neomalthusian said:

There are tens of millions of Americans who disagree with any given American. "Putting unions in partial control of all corporations" is one of the most disagreeable and anti-American notions imaginable.

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And it's your right to have that incorrect opinion. The fact that you have already defaulted to "anti-American" tells me how intellectually honest your thinking is on the topic. Move along.

FieldTheorist said:

And it's your right to have that incorrect opinion.

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You were of the opinion that labor cartels should be "given" partial control of all corporations. For me to call that disagreeable is not "incorrect." The United States is the foremost leader in promoting free trade across the globe. If any opinion can be declared "incorrect," it would be yours. But generally opinions are not objectively "correct" or "incorrect."

The fact that you have already defaulted to "anti-American" tells me how intellectually honest your thinking is on the topic. Move along.

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My basis for calling cartels anti-American is that the United States has passed laws that do not tolerate cartels. Unfortunately they exempted labor organizations from such laws. That can and should be changed.