Icon from a picrew by grgikau. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. The X-Files. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
“Sanders is not a socialist. He is a “democratic socialist.” That one word makes for a world of difference. Sanders favors private ownership and markets, but with rules that protect little people from abuses and uncertainties.
Survey after poll after focus group shows that substantial majorities of Republicans support much of the Sanders economic plan. Many of those Republicans currently support Donald Trump, with his vague promises to stick it to the rich, improve the lot of working class Americans and protect Social Security.
So what are those Americans who support Sanders’ policies but not Sanders missing? Why don’t they understand the huge differences between socialism and democratic socialism?
One issue is the disconnect between what politicians promise and what they could deliver. Sanders would need to win in a sweep election that gave Democrats strong majorities in Congress to get his policies enacted into law.
But there’s a deeper issue with how we engage with our elections. You don’t have to be a Sanders supporter to recognize that America’s political reporters are good at covering the horse race, but terrible at explaining policies of the candidates.
One reason for that flaw is that viewers, and the voters among them, often want personality rather than substance. While there are insightful articles about policy proposals, they don’t resonate. Think about a song so it plays in your mind. Now try to recall anything written by a music critic. Same problem with politics: We recall the rhyme; the reason, not so much.
Compounding this is the terrible job our education system does teaching young people about economic and political philosophies, to distinguish between the -isms. I’ve learned that you can have a more informed conversation about politics and economics with the average waiter or petty merchant in Europe or Canada than with the executive sitting next to you on a domestic flight.
So let’s go back to square one and explain what Sanders is and is not.”
the weirdest thing about 2016 is that there’s a chance we could actually have our first female president…and i’m praying to god that we elect an old white dude instead
ALRIGHT AMERICANS TODAY WE’RE GOING TO TALK ABOUT A THING.
How to make sure our pal Bernie Sanders wins the primaries so he can be our president:
1. First of all, what are primaries?
Well friends, it’s a preliminary election that decides the presidential candidates for each political party. If Bernie loses the primaries, he will NOT be able to become our next president. So for that reason it’s INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT that we all get our butts to those polls when the time comes. Here are the known or expected dates for the 2016 Democratic Party Primaries:
February
Monday, February 1: Iowa
Tuesday, February 9: New Hampshire
Saturday, February 20: Nevada
Saturday, February 27: South Carolina
March
Tuesday, March 1: Alabama; Arkansas;
Colorado; Georgia; Massachusetts; Minnesota; North Carolina;
Oklahoma; Tennessee; Texas; Vermont; Virginia
Saturday, March 5: Louisiana; Nebraska; Kansas
Tuesday, March 8: Mississippi; Michigan
Tuesday, March 15: Florida; Illinois; Missouri; Ohio
Tuesday, March 22: Arizona; Utah
Saturday, March 26: Alaska caucuses; Hawaii; Washington
April
Tuesday, April 5: Wisconsin
Tuesday, April 19: New York
Tuesday, April 26: Maryland; Connecticut; Delaware; Pennsylvania; Rhode Island
May
Tuesday, May 3: Indiana
Tuesday, May 10: West Virginia
Tuesday, May 17: Kentucky; Oregon
June
Sunday, June 5: Puerto Rico
Tuesday, June 7: California; Montana; New Jersey; New Mexico; South Dakota
Tuesday, June 14: Washington, DC
2. Okay cool, now I know when I need to vote!
But do you know in some states you can ONLY vote for Bernie if you are a registered Democrat?
STATES THAT AREOPEN PRIMARIES (you do NOT need to be a registered Democrat to vote for Bernie):
Alabama
Michigan
North Dakota
Arkansas
Minnesota
Vermont
Georgia
Missouri
Wisconsin
Hawaii
Montana
STATES THAT ARE CLOSED PRIMARIES (you MUST be a registered Democrat to vote for Bernie):
Delaware
Maine
New York
Florida
Nevada
Pennsylvania
Kansas
New Jersey
Wyoming
Kentucky
New Mexico
STATES THAT ARE TOP-TWO PRIMARIES (you vote on candidates regardless of their party affiliation so you do NOT need to be a registered Democrat to vote for Bernie):
California
Nebraska
Louisiana
Washington
STATES THAT ARE HYBRID PRIMARIES (these vary between open and closed, and often depend on the current party, so if you live in one of these states you WILL need to find out the protocol for the 2016 presidential primaries):
Alaska
Maryland
Rhode Island
Arizona
Massachusetts
South Carolina
Colorado
Mississippi
South Dakota
Connecticut
New Hampshire
Tennessee
Idaho
North Carolina
Texas
Illinois
Ohio
Utah
Indiana
Oklahoma
Virginia
Iowa
Oregon
West Virginia
3. Okay, so how do I register to vote/as a Democrat?
Worried because your state has closed primaries or you’ve never used your constitutional rights to vote before and you think registering will be a terrible, vigorous, process?
DON’T WORRY FRIENDS.
Registering to vote is so easy, let me walk you through it.
Here is an online form you can mail in (available in multiple languages) that also gives you step by step instructions depending on your state. If you live in New Hampshire, North Dakota, Wyoming, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, or the U.S. Virgin Islands, unfortunately you can NOT use this method.
For any state, you can check the following places to register in person:
State-funded programs that serve people with disabilities
Any public facility that a state has designated as a voter registration agency
Here is another link of states where you can register online, if you’re an anxious nugget like me.
EACH STATE HAS A SPECIFIC DEADLINE TO REGISTER IN TIME FOR PRIMARIES. IF YOU NEED TO REGISTER, MAKE SURE YOU FIND OUT WHEN THAT IS AND REGISTER BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.
If you do end up having to register in person, do not be afraid friends! You are doing a very important and brave thing.
4. Alright, so I know when I have to vote, I am registered to vote, and if my state has closed primaries, I registered as a Democrat! I’m done now, right?
Nope, there’s one last thing! If you’re like me and unable to get to a voting poll, whether or not it’s due to school, work, your health, or being out of your state/country, you need to fill out an ABSENTEE BALLOT FORM!
This link contains not only the absentee ballot forms of every state, but some even have more voter registration forms as well!
DON’T FORGET. DEADLINES EXIST.
Write it in your planner, your calendar. Post it on your ceiling. Write it in ketchup on your burger. Tattoo it to your arm. Whatever helps!
AND PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, WHATEVER YOU DO:
Do not brush this off. Do not assume, well I’m just one person, what is one vote going to do? Bernie can win without little old me.
That’s wrong. You and your vote is so incredibly important. Bernie cannot win without you. Without us.
So please. Read this. Spread this. Register. Get ready to vote. Bernie promises to do his best to better America. Let’s do our best to get him there.
In 2008, when then-Senator Barack Obama promised progressive
change if elected President, his primary opponent, then-Senator Hillary
Clinton, derided him.
“The skies will open, the light will come down, celestial
choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and
the world will be perfect,” she said, sarcastically, adding “I have
no illusions about how hard this is going to be.
Fast forward eight years. “I wish that we could elect a
Democratic president who could wave a magic wand and say, ‘We shall do this,
and we shall do that,’” Clinton said recently in response to Bernie Sanders’s proposals. "That ain’t the real
world we’re living in.“
So what’s possible in “the real world we’re living in?”
There are two dominant views about how presidents accomplish fundamental
change.
The first might be called the “deal-maker-in-chief,” by which presidents
threaten or buy off powerful opponents.
Barack Obama got the Affordable Care Act this way – gaining the
support of the pharmaceutical industry, for example, by promising them far more
business and guaranteeing that Medicare wouldn’t use its vast bargaining power
to negotiate lower drug prices.
But such deals can be expensive to the public (the tab for the pharmaceutical
exemption is about $16 billion a year), and they don’t really change the
allocation of power. They just allow powerful interests to cash in.
The costs of such deals in “the world we’re living in” are
likely to be even higher now. Powerful interests are more powerful than ever thanks
to the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens
United decision opening the floodgates to big money.
Which takes us to the second view about how presidents
accomplish big things that powerful interests don’t want: by mobilizing the public
to demand them and penalize politicians who don’t heed those demands.
Teddy Roosevelt got a progressive income tax, limits on corporate
campaign contributions, regulation of foods and drugs, and the dissolution of giant
trusts – not because he was a great dealmaker but because he added fuel to
growing public demands for such changes.
It was at a point in American history similar to our own. Giant
corporations and a handful of wealthy people dominated American democracy.
The lackeys of the “robber barons” literally placed sacks of cash on the desks
of pliant legislators.
The American public was angry and frustrated. Roosevelt channeled
that anger and frustration into support of initiatives that altered the
structure of power in America. He used the office of the president – his “bully
pulpit,” as he called it – to galvanize political action.
Could Hillary Clinton do the same? Could Bernie Sanders?
Clinton fashions her prospective presidency as a continuation of
Obama’s. Surely Obama understood the importance of mobilizing the public
against the moneyed interests. After all, he had once been a community
organizer.
After the 2008 election he even turned his election campaign into
a new organization called “Organizing for America” (now dubbed “Organizing for
Action”), explicitly designed to harness his grassroots support.
So why did Obama end up relying more on deal-making than public
mobilization? Because he thought he needed big money for his 2012 campaign.
Despite OFA’s public claims (in mailings, it promised to secure
the “future of the progressive movement”), it morphed into a top-down campaign organization
to raise big money.
In the interim, Citizens United had freed “independent” groups like
OFA to raise almost unlimited funds, but retained limits on the size of contributions
to formal political parties.
That’s the heart of problem. No candidate or president can
mobilize the public against the dominance of the moneyed interests while being
dependent on their money. And no candidate or president can hope to break the
connection between wealth and power without mobilizing the public.
(A personal note: A few years ago OFA wanted to screen around America
the movie Jake Kornbluth and I did about widening inequality, called
“Inequality for All” – but only on condition we delete two minutes identifying big Democratic donors. We
refused. They wouldn’t show it.)
In short, “the real world we’re living in” right now won’t allow
fundamental change of the sort we need. It takes a movement.
Such a movement is at the heart of the Sanders campaign. The
passion that’s fueling it isn’t really about Bernie Sanders. Had Elizabeth
Warren run, the same passion would be there for her.
It’s about standing up to the moneyed interests and restoring
our democracy.
The year is 1995, congress member Bernie Sanders stands in opposition of a homophobic statement said by Duke Cunningham. Cunningham derisively refers to “homos in the military” to support his argument while (strangely) discussing the Clean Water Act. Sanders, having none of it, quickly rises to the defense of thousands of men and women everywhere. Sanders ire is such that he repeatedly disrespects the Chairman by speaking over him in order to say his piece. [Video Source]
What does this say for Sanders? Well, that’s for you to decide. But to me, it says that for 20+ years strong he has shown his public support for LGBT+ persons everywhere, even in the face of ridicule and disrespect. Unlike some, Sanders has always been vocal about his beliefs concerning the LGBT+ community, and he has always held them. Key word always, and not just when doing so might garner him support for his campaigns.
BONUS:
“This is what the Clintons do: they play dirty. But that doesn’t make it right, and it doesn’t make it good for the Democratic Party.
One of the really admirable things about the Democratic race for president so far has been the absence of the kind of nasty, dirty politics that we see all too often on the other side of the aisle among Republicans.
As a candidate running for major office, Hillary Clinton has every right to point out her opponent’s track record on key issues. But she should do it honestly. She should do so in a way that enlightens the public instead of confusing it.
If her dishonest attack on Bernie Sanders’s CFMA vote is just a preview of where the Clinton campaign intends to take this race, we’re in for a long and very distressing primary season.”
“The
bill that helped deregulate Wall Street, the CFMA, the one that Bernie
Sanders was forced to vote for because it was snuck into a bill to
prevent govt shutdown at 11th hour. The vote that Hillary hit him for at
the debate…HRC campaign Chief Campaign Officer Gary Gensler helped
write it.”
Huh. That’s weird. If Hillary Clinton is such a fantastic champion of the things left progressives care about, and is going to be so tough on Wall Street, why in the world would she make such a dishonest attack on Bernie Sanders? And why, if she’s so super duper serious about taking on the banks, is her campaign’s Chief Financial Officer the guy who wrote the fucking bill that let the banks destroy the economy and people’s lives, and get away with it?
Gosh, maybe Hillary Clinton isn’t the genuine progressive she’s pretending to be, as long as it suits her to wear the mask.
