I’m not an idealist or a zealot. I’ve share the frustrations of the last 8 years. We elected a smart, skilled, talented, charming African-American president in what looked like a revolutionary reaction to the dimwit DUHbya and his corrupt cronies. Having lost, they fought tooth and nail no matter how racist or foolish it appeared. Won’t Hillary or Bernie face the same stiff opposition. Sure. Does that mean we give up and vote for Trumpfft? SHIT NO. Bernie isn’t the beginning or end of a revolution. Instead, he could be a key step in a long series. So could Hillary. We know the Republicans will remain a goose-step backwards until they kill themselves. Why not push the pendulum, bend the reed, reach farther than you can grasp at the moment.
Bernie Sanders and the Realists – The New Yorker By John Cassidy
Sanders, as I understand him, isn’t claiming that his ambitious and costly program is realistic in today’s Washington. To the contrary, he says that the political system is so broken, and so in hock to big money, that it is virtually impossible to effect nearly any substantive progressive change. The only way to make big changes, Sanders argues, is to create a mass movement that faces down corporate interests and their quislings. Once this movement materializes, all sorts of things that now seem out of the question—such as true universal health care, free college tuition, and a much more progressive tax system—will become possible.
This, surely, is what Sanders means by the term “political revolution,” which he uses all the time. …
Sanders was careful to place his policy goals in the context of his larger narrative:
That’s what our campaign is about. It is thinking big. It is understanding that in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, we should have health care for every man, woman, and child as a right, that we should raise the minimum wage to at least $15 an hour, that we have got to create millions of decent-paying jobs by rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. So, what my first days are about is bringing America together, to end the decline of the middle class, to tell the wealthiest people in this country that yes, they are going to start paying their fair share of taxes, and that we are going to have a government that works for all of us, and not just big campaign contributors. …
Of course, that goes back to the argument about realism, and the point that Sanders’s main goal is changing what it is considered possible. A more orthodox candidate might well indicate some flexibility at this point in his campaign, saying that his immediate priority as President would be raising the minimum wage, or providing free college tuition, or breaking up the banks, and relegating an ambitious health-care overhaul to the status of future goal. Sanders, however, didn’t get to where he is now by embracing political orthodoxy. He seems unlikely to change tack.