Why I DON'T support Bernie for President

[Ptarmigan]

Why I DON'T support Bernie for President
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251524437

This got a campfire going.

MaggieD (2,792 posts)   Mon Aug 17, 2015, 02:39 PM

Why I DON'T support Bernie for President
 This is a long post, but hopefully very specific about the reasons Bernie does not have my support. I am not a political newbie. I have been paying attention to and been involved in politics all of my adult life. I understand the issues. IOW, I am a highly informed voter.

Here are the reasons I do not support Bernie:

1. He talks a lot about the problems, but his policy prescriptions are either wrong, completely missing, or not viable/passable.

I actually want to start calling him Captain Obvious, because he seems to be stuck on telling us what the problems are over and over and over again. Millions upon millions of people in this country already know what the problems are. Every other progressive candidate sees the same thing and has spoken out about it. He is not a hero to me because he can see the obvious.

And there are some things he clearly doesn’t see that others do, or has been very much a Johnny come lately on issues, such as institutional racism.

His policy prescriptions are wrong in many cases, IMO. For instance, free college for “qualified” students is not something that will truly help PoC (and is not designed to). Their K-12 schools are horribly underfunded. First we must fix that problem or his free college pitch is just another pander to middle class white kids. And he wants to pay for it off the backs off fees that impact 401K and pension funds. That’s ridiculous. HRC’s and Obama’s proposals for free community college are much more viable.

HRC gets it. We need to find a way to beef up schools in urban areas with programs like head start and better funding. They should not take funding away from failing schools, they should increase it. Bernie seems oblivious to this.

Break up the banks? Reinstate Glass Steagall? Why? How will that help anything? It wasn’t commercial banks that failed. It was investment banks NOT tied to commercial banks and mortgage companies that failed. And thank god the commercial banks COULD absorb the investment banks or it would have been worse. The problem isn’t Glass Steagall; the problem is lax regulation of investment banks and others involved in the housing industry.

No wonder HRC won’t commit to reinstating Glass Steagall. It’s a fun talking point for rallies and will raise cheers from people who don’t understand the issue, but it won’t fix the problem.

On the TPP, as I have stated before, reasonable people can disagree on that. One of the best things about it is that it allows workers in other countries to organize into unions. That one thing could actually be the key to leveling the playing field. I don’t have anything against a candidate that is against trade agreements, but I at least expect him to articulate why, and what it would take to for him to be in favor of a trade agreement. We live in a global economy – that’s just a fact of life he seems to ignore. He doesn’t seem to have an alternative solution, and he sure as hell doesn’t seem capable of talking to people like they are adults on the issue like HRC does.

Nothing made Bernie look so inept and like an old out of touch white guy than Netroots nation. When challenged by BLM he went right back to the dumb economic equality talking point. You know why? Because that is what Bernie truly believes. Those that worked with him back in the days all his supporters like to rally around to prove he is some sort of civil rights champion have said that even back then he was convinced racial injustice was really rooted in classism. And he is completely wrong about that. So completely wrong.

I am not a PoC, but I am a lesbian. I spent my first 20 years in the closet so that I could have a shot at economic equality. And it worked. But when I came out of the closet 15 years ago after I was economically successful I did not find some sort of civil rights nirvana awaiting me. I still couldn’t marry my partner. I still had to raise a child whose parents could not marry. I still had to deal with discrimination day in and day out. My son was still bullied in school because he had two Moms. ANY GLBT person that has economic security can tell you that economic security does not confer civil rights. Despite what a lot of straight white privileged people seem to believe. It’s just bullshit. And I do not want a president that is so clueless on such an important issue.

HRC has voiced support for and championed policy proposals that actually impact the symptoms of racial injustice and has for a long time. Bernie is finally on board (at least mouthing the words after much pressure has been applied), but again, his Netroots nation performance was a dead giveaway that he doesn’t get it.

2. He has a very long record of accomplishing nothing. He has been in congress for 25 years with almost nothing to show for it, and certainly nothing that addresses the current issues we face. And I resent that he is introducing lots of legislation now that he knows is not passable, simply as fodder for his campaign. The senate staffers he has working on these issues are being paid with tax payer funds, all of which is being wasted.

Clearly he is unable to build the kind of coalitions that are needed to get things done. I know this from personal experience. It isn’t just BLM he ignores. Once I had made it career wise (economically) I did quite a bit of volunteer work for liberal policy advocacy groups at a fairly high level in DC. Bernie was nowhere to be found. Sure, he votes the right way, but he is completely uninterested in understanding the challenges faced by many of us – at least not interested enough to talk to us. It was absolutely no surprise to me that he wasn’t keen on talking to BLM. To me, it fits his MO exactly. An old white guy who thinks he knows best, and doesn’t need to hear from anyone else.

You know who can build coalitions? HRC. She has spent her life doing just that. Not being able to play well with others is a no go for me when it comes to a presidential candidate. Our issues are just too important.

3. He is not a Democrat. In fact he has spent 25 years dissing Democrats, even to the point of calling for a primary on Obama in 2012 (as I make sure to remind every PoC I meet that mentions the presidential campaign).

Don’t give me this “he’s running as a Democrat” baloney. See item #2. He isn’t going to be able to build a coalition with Dems in congress because he has scorned them for decades.

4. Huge numbers of his supporters come off as racist, white privileged elitists. This is not in any way specific to DU. I see it all over the internet. On Facebook, Twitter, comments on liberal blogs – just everywhere. It’s impossible for Bernie to be unaware of some of the really clueless and sometimes overtly racist things his supporters say hundreds of times a day. As far as I can tell, he has not said a word about it. He is either oblivious or content to let it slide.

Even if you don’t put that on him, at some point a person is known by the company they keep, or the crowd that supports them. I can’t even imagine throwing my voice into that mix by supporting him. I don’t think I have ever been more disheartened as a progressive than I have been in watching the comments of Bernie supporters over the last few months. In fact, even the 2004 blaming of the gays for Kerry’s loss wasn’t as disheartening as Bernie’s supporters are saying now. Just no. I will not join them.

seabeyond (102,701 posts)
1. maggie, welcome back

i have missed your voice. now, lets read what you have to say.

The Ku Klux Klam speaks.

Dawgs (12,886 posts)
3. "Huge numbers of his supporters come off as racist, white privileged elitists." n/t

Bernie Sanders is even further left than Hillary Clinton.

JDPriestly (51,051 posts)
305. Bill Clinton was in the White House for 8 years. Hillary was with him.

They offered no solutions for these problems either. In fact, their tenure in the White House worsened a lot of situations.

And then after their tenure in the White House, they further shined up to people like Pete Peterson, major foe of Social Security. Bernie wants to raise the cap to pay for strengthening and expanding Social Security. As a retired person who has a lot of friends who are retired, I can tell you that 401(K)s are not where it is at for insuring the survival of people past the retirement age. Social Security is. It is reliable and although it pays very little, it means survival to the large majority of us. For many older people, it is their only income. And as world trade expands and swallows up the best paying jobs in America, the pittance that Social Security pays its recipients is going to mean the difference between food on the table or an empty stomach for many, many seniors. Hillary is weak on Social Security. Watch her response to Obama when he suggested raising the cap in the 2008 debates. She is way out of touch with the reality of seniors in America. Sanders is not out of touch.

Hillary does not get the big bucks for speaking to wealthy and corporate America for nothing. She is talking to the investor class for those big bucks. They know what they are buying when they pay her. I want someone who owes me favors, not someone who owes favors to Goldman Sachs.

I want Bernie Sanders. And so do a number of Americans like me.

Democrats in Congress need to learn on which side their voters' bread is buttered (and had better worry about whether it is being buttered). They need to stop worrying about Wall Street and the corporations and start worrying about Main Street and the American people.

It is not the job of us the voters, the people, to vote for a president that members of Congress and our party leaders like. It is the job of the members of Congress and the leaders of our party to support the president we like and elect.

Let's get our shoes on the right feet here. Congress serves us, not the corproations.  That is, the members of Congress who want to be re-elected serve us and not them, not the corporations and the party elite.

Free college tuition.

As for the damage that a tax to fund college would do to 401(K)s? That is the concern only of people who have 401(K)s. The damage that greedy managers of 401(K) accounts do to your 401(K) should be of greater concern than the cost of a few pennies of tax per trade to fund your kids' college educations.

In the sum of things, it is probably cheaper to pay the tax and get free college. Someone needs to do the math, but be my guest. I like the idea of taxing Wall Street trades to fund free college for the next generation.

Many wealthy people take the money they make on Wall Street and set up trusts to fund their grandchildren's education. Why don't we do that as a nation? Isn't that what investment is about, putting money aside to fund a better future? So people who have money in the stock market take home a little less in order to put money in trust for other people's hard-working talented children. What is wrong with that idea? I really like it.

401(K)s are the domain of people making way over the minimum wage or even the average or median wage and a tax on them should be imposed to help pay for college.

We need higher capital gains taxes, not lower ones.

Here is the system we now have.

After high school (whether completed or not), young people go to university, technical schools, junior colleges, the military, straight to work or remain unemployed on the streets.

Most of those who attend post-secondary schools whether university, technical, or some sort of college graduate in debt. The interest rate varies from maybe 3% to 7 1/2 or 8 1/2 % (what I paid for one of my post graduate degrees). The debt adds up. If your parents aren't wealthy or at least middle class and you become a doctor, you graduate with enormous debt. If you graduate to become a teacher, your debt is very great compared to the income you will likely earn. Same for nurses, for technical jobs, same for all professions, all lines of work.

The weight of that college tuition, trade school tuition, post-high school tuition is weighing down our economy. It is preventing young people from being able to take jobs that help society but don't pay premium salaries. It is preventing young people from being able to have children and buy houses and live their lives.

Meanwhile the already rich are doing very well. As the interest paid on student loans flows into the general fund with tax revenue, Congress has voted to lower the taxes on the very, very rich.  In effect, students whose families cannot afford to send them to college, are being asked to fund tax breaks for corporations and the very rich. I'm agin' that. I'm ain' it and there is no excuse for it.

Bernie tells us what the unemployment rates are for young people. Around 50% for young Americans who are identified as Black. That is horrendous. The justice issues that are killing POC and destroying their lives need to be dealt with as the most urgent and most serious of our issues, but the economic issues that lead to masses of Black people, especially men, who are homeless and jobless, hopeless and prison-bound are long-term issues that need to be dealt with.

The Clintons were in the White House for 8 years. Bill Clinton set up a commission to study race issues. Why has so little, next to nothing, changed when of the past 22-23 years, Third Way Democrats who claim to prioritize social issues have been in the White House? Why are we still talking about police brutality when we have a Black president in the White House?

Maybe it is because we have not dealt with the long-range economic issues and have not really tackled the tough social issues.

I do not deny that the social issues are very important. Bernie acknowledges that. There is nothing new in saying that. The justice system needs to be changed to insure that our police do not profile people based on race and do not think or feel that they have a license to harass, jail or kill people based on race or neighborhood.

LGBT issues are being dealt with as society changes its attitude toward LGBTs. That is not the problem of the moment. That will take a little time, but not much. The anti-LGBT crowd is literally dying out as I write. But the LGBT marriage issue was based on the precedent that marriage is a fundamental right and not on whether being LGBT triggers discrimination issues, whether LGBT status is immutable, is part of our birthright. There is a lot of work to do on that. But Bernie was in favor of recognizing the equal rights against discrimination for LGBT people long before Hillary broached the topic. And again, what did the Clintons do about LGBT rights during their time in the White House? Wasn't it during those years that the Defense of Marriage Act passed?

We have undergone an enormous technological revolution. It is comparable to the revolution we underwent in the late 19th century, the industrial revolution.

As then, the new technologies, the new production methods worked havoc on old labor/management and other economic relationships. As then, it took a social revolution, then the populist movement, to deal with the new technological reality and the effect on that technological revolution on families, on the workplace, on society as a whole.

Bernie is calling for that social revolution. Will it improve the lives of LGBT people, of people of color, the world, when it achieves its goals? Yes. It will.

As I posted elsewhere, I really don't get out a lot, but in the last few weeks, I have talked at length with 3 or 4 people of the limited number of people with whom I have talked who are scared, really scared of losing their jobs and their livelihoods. Two of the three are relatively young and have children. The third is an upper middle-aged single woman moving toward the end of her working career but not yet ready either financially or in any other way, to retire. (At this time, that, I believe is when you are most likely to lose a job. I don't have numbers on it, but I think the people in their late 40s through early 60s are most vulnerable to being fired right now. It is absolutely shameful that that is so.)

People are scared for their work because their work means survival. And their work, no matter how much they complain about it, gives meaning to their lives.

The TPP is going to displace yet another large slice of the workforce. And, no, I disagree with the OP. We do not have to go there. We do not have to agree to the kind of plundering of our economy that international trade now brings with it. We can have international trade without plunder. The international trade we now have is being and has been negotiated by corporations and their purchased spokespeople in Congress and in the administration.

Bernie has other plans for the inevitable move toward an international economy. I am solidly with Bernie on this issue. No to the TPP courts. Americans do not realize what those courts will mean to our nation. National parks anyone? I can readily envision scenarios under which corporations could force us to pay manifold just to be able to keep our national parks from them. And that is just one of many horrors that the TPP and even the existing international courts could impose on us. We do not want or need the TPP. We should not accept the imposition of TPP courts.

We cannot at this time afford to expand out involvement in international trade. That is not my opinion. One glance at our balance of trade deficit tells us that, no, we are not competing and we cannot compete at this time.

What do we need to compete in the global economy?

A better educated, better trained workforce?

A national strategy to compete that is decided upon through truly democratic means?

A government that is not bought out by corporations and Wall Street and big hedge funds?

I answer yes to these four key questions. So does Bernie.

Bill and Hillary Clinton had their four years. Bill signed NAFTA, the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the Welfare Reform Act and a draconian bill on crime that has resulted in our having the largest percentage of prisoners of any country in the world.

The passage of NAFTA brought with it some sort of re-education legislation. Obviously, considering, as Bernie points out, that real unemployment is high in our country, that re-education legislation did not accomplish much. We do not need to allow corporations to sell more of our jobs to the lowest bidder. We need to stay away from agreements that give us no case-by-case right to turn down offers of free trade, to refuse to trade if the trade does not serve our national interests. What a bunch of hogwash the corporations are selling us when they speak to us of free trade.

And then we get to environmental issues. Had the Clinton administration done its job, we would have far more solar panels, a lot more alternative energy than we have today. The Clintons are not the answer when it comes to environmental issues. Hillary even refuses to offer her opinion or answer a question about the XL pipeline near one of our most important aquifers. On that basis alone, she is unqualified to be the Democratic nominee for president.

Considering the record of the first Clinton administration, I certainly do not trust either of the Clintons with the leadership and representation of the US right now. No thanks.

Anti-Clinton sentiment runs deep at DU.

ismnotwasm (22,965 posts)
316. Why are you talking about Bill Clinton?

seabeyond (102,701 posts)
12. i agree with number 1.

he is totally obtuse to the unlevel playing field and shows repeatedly in the plans he has come up with.

and clintons economic speech.plan had me researching the whole glass steagal. uninformed, i just went along with sanders. informed changed the whole picture.

went right back to the dumb economic equality talking point. You know why? Because that is what Bernie truly believes.


i agree. and even now, to this day, asked about his campaign his first and only inclination is to say he is reaching out to working and middle class. ie, whites.

all his supporters like to rally around to prove he is some sort of civil rights champion have said that even back then he was convinced racial injustice was really rooted in classism.


yes. there is the difference of people that do not hear what he is saying, and those of us that DO listen to sanders and believe what he is saying.

2. i agree with this and it is very important and should be important to all of us. i too have concluded that he does not listens, he tells. clinton the opposite. listens, processes and speaks. omalley also.

3. again, i agree. an independent using the democratic party. in 1990 he made a deal with democratic party not to run a viable candidate so he could win, and he would give the democrats his vote. is that being bought?

4. he is reaching out to working class and middle class of the democratic, republican, independent, teabaggin', populist and libertarian parties. ya... not really the democratic base.

i agree with your post. very much exactly where i am sitting.

[GOBUCKS]

tl;dr

Why are DUmmies such windbags?

The less they know, the longer their posts.

It's like Fidel's six-hour speeches.

[JohnnyReb]

What has Bernie proposed?....maybe that some other DUmmies may have to break a sweat to earn a living?

[Carl]

Readers digest version.

We want FREEEEEEEEE shit.

[Rebel]

JDPriestly (51,051 posts)

401(K)s are the domain of people making way over the minimum wage or even the average or median wage and a tax on them should be imposed to help pay for college.

We need higher capital gains taxes, not lower ones.

Yeah, our economy isn't coming to a screeching halt fast enough.

What an ignorant DUmbass. ...or is it just plain stupidity? Who in the **** is going to invest when their profits start to take more and more of a hit? And for what? So the taxes from their profits, people that actually DID do something right to further themselves and make themselves self-sufficient, go to the parasites in the nation that didn't do shit BUT rely on government?

[txradioguy]

JDPriestly (51,051 posts)

401(K)s are the domain of people making way over the minimum wage or even the average or median wage and a tax on them should be imposed to help pay for college.

Look ****tard...I have a 401(K) plan and I barely make above what you assclowns want to pay some no experience illegal flipping burgers at McDonalds.

My salary (approx $50K) breaks down to an hourly wage of $24 an hour.  You pukes want to pay some Mickey D's fry cook $15 and call it a "living wage".

I've busted my ass for over 17 years to get promoted to the position of responsibility I'm in and to get to the economic level I've achieved so far.

And yet you claim someone like me deserves to have my taxes raised to pay for some free loaders tuition just because I have a retirement fund?

Seriously???

 


GFYS

[Big Dog]

To summarize:

Muffin buffer primitive: Bernie sucks.
Holier-than-thou primitive: Hillary sucks.

Guess what, lurking DUmmies: they're both correct. You have a shit sammich in each hand, and your fellow primitives demand that you eat one of them.

Enjoy that bad taste in your mouth, lurking DUmmies. You earned it.