Why our country needs Bernie Sanders

Dear Friends,

Our political system is broken and corrupt.  The old saying that the world is run by those who show up is no longer true with respect to our political system.  Now the correct saying is that the United States is run by those who show up and those with money, and we are not sure for the moment which of those two groups will win.

Even I was shocked by the recent article in The New York Times reporting that 158 families have given half of all contributions to the 2016 Presidential elections so far (here).  Although I should not have been shocked since I already knew that the Koch brothers were planning on spending as much if not more than either of the two major political parties for 2016 election cycle.  Congress does not represent the interests of the people.  It represents the interests of the oligarchs who fund the process and pay the lobbyist.  Just one example is the power of the gun lobby, fronted by the NRA.  Consistently +90% support background checks and a majority support stronger gun control legislation, yet Congress will not even give new laws consideration.

How does Congress get away with not taking action on things that the vast majority of Americans want and support?  People do not vote and big business spends billions of dollars to buy the system.  In the 2014 midterm elections only 36.4% of eligible voters actually voted.  It was the worst turnout percentage since 1942.  The United States ranks 31st out of 34 top industrialized democratic countries even using our 2012 Presidential year election (53.6%).  Belgium was first with 87.2%.  If Americans had voted in the same percentage as the Belgians in 2012, there would have been 200 million votes cast instead of only 129 million.  That is 71 million more voters.  Just to put that in perspective, President Obama beat Mitt Romney in the popular vote by 5 million; President Obama got 65.4 million votes.  Just think what would have happened if those other 71 million people had voted.

There are a lot of what are referred to as safe districts.  According to Chris Cillizza's analysis after the 2012 elections in the Washington Post (here), 38% of all Congressional seats are "safe"; that is to say the current incumbent won by at least 67%.  Clearly gerrymandering has had a big impact on the creation of these safe districts and while both parties have gerrymandered districts, the Republicans have done a much better job.  The Republicans have also been able to enact voter suppression legislation at the state level.  But Republicans also do a much better job of getting out their supporters to vote.  Higher voter turnout has always helped Democrats.  Getting everybody to vote would certainly make those "safe" districts much less safe particularly when you consider that the incumbents have moved so far right to protect themselves against Tea Party primary challengers.

People do not vote because they see no reason to vote.  The Democratic Party during my lifetime has been on a steady move to the right, accelerated under the Clinton administration.  Remember in 1960, the last year that President Eisenhower was President the highest income tax bracket was 91% and the country was doing very well economically.  This move to the right has coincided with increased political contributions by big business and the very wealthy, accelerated by the Citizen's United decision.  The Democratic establishment disowned Obamacare rather than educating the people about the good that it would do.  The Democratic establishment has and continues to pursue a strategy of being Republican light because they are too uncomfortable with real change and bold ideas.

The October 19th "All in with Chris Hayes" had a segment about the electability of a democratic socialist (Bernie Sanders).  The two guests were John Nichols who was not endorsing Bernie Sanders but who has great confidence in the American people's ability to embrace new and bold ideas and ended with the idea that perhaps the person with the boldest ideas will be the winner.  The other guest was Matt Bennett a Clinton supporter and advisor who could not imagine changing the narrative that the Republicans have crafted that government is bad and cannot solve the problems.  If you accept the Republican narrative, you have lost the battle.  Here is link to that segment.  It is very thought provoking.

Hillary Clinton is at best an incrementalist.   She will not dramatically increase the number of people voting.  Bernie Sanders has clearly demonstrated that he can and is getting some of those 71 million people that did not vote to become involved in politics because there is a difference between a political revolution and more of the same establishment politics.  Money can only be defeated by huge voter turnout and engagement, and Bernie is the only candidate with a chance to do succeed.  He can get this country headed back to being a democracy.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Democratic Presidential Candidate Debates

Dear Friends,

Despite tons of criticism, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, continues to stick with her limited number and timing of debates by Democratic candidates for President as well as her exclusivity rule which prohibits any candidate from debating in an unauthorized debate.  Simon Rosenberg starts his piece entitled, "The Democratic debate schedule is a mess.  Here's how to fix it." on MSNBC (here) with the following paragraph.

The critics are right: If the point of presidential primary debates is to give candidates a forum to make their case to the tens of millions of people who will pick their party’s nominee, the current Democratic debate calendar is wholly insufficient to the task at hand. There are too few debates, too many are on weekends or holidays when viewership is much lower, and there aren’t enough close to when the most consequential voting will take place.

He then discusses the Democratic primary schedule and concludes (as others have as well)

The result is that the Democratic nominee will be effectively locked in by mid-March, only six weeks after primary voting begins. It is potentially a very compressed calendar.

By that time the Democrats will have had only four of the six debates that are authorized.  Clearly that is not enough.  It is clearly not enough when you consider the incredibly stupid times that the debates are scheduled.  While Simon Rosenberg's analysis of the dates is very good, Laura Clauson at the Daily Kos (here) has a much more colorful analysis of the dates.

And check out some of these dates: Saturday, November 14. Saturday, really? Who exactly is the DNC expecting to watch a Saturday night debate? But it gets better! Saturday, December 19. Yes, the Saturday six days before Christmas. Hmm ... I could attend a holiday party with my friends and loved ones, do some last-minute shopping, or watch a presidential debate. Why not just schedule it on Christmas Eve, FFS? But let's keep going through this debate schedule: January 17. That's the Sunday night of Martin Luther King Day weekend. This is absurd.

Simon Rosenberg cites the debate schedule from the 2008 Presidential election in an extremely convincing argument to follow the same schedule.

The last time Democrats had an open presidential race, the DNC held 19 debates, starting in April of 2007. The end result of that wide open process was a 53% victory in the general election by Obama and unprecedented levels of citizen engagement in our politics. That wide open and early system helped produce the best election result for the Democratic Party in 44 years, and should only have been significantly altered if there was a powerful rationale and argument from the party leadership. This is particularly true given the enormous policy commitment Democrats are making today to reforming our political and electoral systems to give more Americans a more meaningful voice in their democracy.

Corey Canter on the New Democratic Network has a blog that gives lots of articles on the subject (here) if you want to read more.

Please contact Debbie Wasserman Schultz and complain. I did it through the Democratic National Committee website which was a real pain so I would suggest contacting her campaign office (here).

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Rachel Maddow to moderate Democratic candidate forum

Dear Friends,

Rachel Maddow has been selected to moderate a Democratic Candidate Forum in South Carolina on November 6th.  While the forum is not a debate since the candidates will not appear on stage together but will be appear one at a time, forums like this one are at least better than nothing.  The Democratic establishment is tilting the playing field in favor of Hillary Clinton by limiting the number of actual debates to six.  But that is a topic for another day.

Here is a link to the segment from Rachel's show where she announced that she would moderate the forum.  I would have embedded it but for some reason I am incapable of doing that.

I am a huge supporter of Rachel, but she made a couple of troubling comments and I think she is missing the point about why Bernie Sanders should be the Democratic candidate for President.  First, she said that there are no substantive policy differences between Hillary and Bernie.  There are important differences particularly with respect to Wall Street regulation, too big to fail, use of the military, a truly level playing field for all, etc.  Rachel said there were no differences in their college plans or health care policies.  There are big differences.  Hillary's plans utilize the status quo as a base.  Bernie's plans focus on what the right thing to do is.  Both healthcare and education should be rights in this country.  He treats them as such providing by free public college education and single payer universal healthcare.

But perhaps more important than the policy differences, and in large part because of them, Bernie will generate the enthusiasm needed to get people to vote that would otherwise, and except for a few times have, stayed home.  She thought that the campaigns would turn to who had the position first and personal issues.  Those are the wrong topics.  I hope that she will focus the forum on how Democrats can regain the House and the Senate.  Hillary gives us little or no chance to achieve that result, but Bernie gives us a real chance.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal