For Starters He Can Pry Open The Contradictions In Contemporary Liberalism
Republicans are fond of hurling the epithet “socialist” at Democrats even those Democrats who pursue policy reforms originally hatched by conservatives, who push hard for free trade agreements, and who appoint cabinet secretaries and top advisors with strong ties to the financial sector.
This “socialist” name-calling is usually nonsense. But now Republicans and all Americans are finally going to get to see the real thing in action. With Bernie Sanders competing seriously against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, it looks like all of us will have at least the better part of a year to observe the behavior of that rarest of all endangered political species: a bona fide American socialist.
But what does that even mean? Just what kind of a socialist is Bernie Sanders?
To help answer these questions, I spoke to Jack Ross, author of an important new book, The Socialist Party of America: A Complete History.
Ideologically speaking, this places Sanders at some remove from the New Left that rose to prominence during the 1960s. While the New Left at first positioned itself as a more stringently leftist alternative to the Old Left stance of the Socialist Party, which was already moribund by the late 50s, the New Left’s alliance with the civil rights movement led it rather quickly to embrace identity politics an emphasis that entered the Democratic bloodstream when the party’s left-wing faction took control in 1972.
Warren Reevaluates Bloomberg Drops Out After Super Tuesday
LOS ANGELES New York billionaire Mike Bloomberg suspended his presidential campaign and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren was reassessing her candidacy Wednesday as the winnowing process in the Democrats 2020 nomination fight lurched forward after a consequential Super Tuesday.
Bloomberg became the third failed Democratic presidential contender to exit the race in three days. Like the others, he endorsed Joe Biden, the big winner on Super Tuesday with victories in 10 of 14 states, and called him the best chance to defeat President Donald Trump in November.
Sen. Bernie Sanders lashed back in a Wednesday news conference in Vermont, declaring himself in a neck-and-neck race with Biden, despite the former vice presidents overwhelming support from the Democratic establishment.
What this campaign I think is increasingly about is, Which side are you on? Sanders said. There has never been a campaign in recent history which has taken on the entire political establishment. That is an establishment that is working frantically to try to defeat us.
The new sense of urgency from Sanders and his allies came just hours after a resurgent Biden scored victories from Texas to Massachusetts, revitalizing a presidential bid that was teetering on the edge of disaster just days earlier.
Who Is Bernie Sanders
- Sanders had his first political victory in Burlington, Vermont, where he toppled the reigning six-term Democrat in 1981 for the mayoral seat by a margin of just 10 votes
- Despite efforts by establishment Democrats to thwart his early career, Sanders served four terms as mayor before being elected to the US House of Representatives in 1990 – the first independent politician in four decades to do so
- He won his current senate seat in 2007 and is currently in his third term
- Sanders has an older brother, Larry, who lives in the UK and is currently the health and social care spokesman for the Green Party
Meanwhile, Sanders has risen in national polls as Biden has faltered. He boasts a veteran campaign structure that has basically been up and running since 2015, and a donor and volunteer network that spans the nation.
His $25m fundraising haul in January alone will ensure he has more than enough resources to compete in every state on the crowded March primary calendar.
He has been officially or unofficially supported by figures from UK Labour MP Diane Abbott to YouTube star Joe Rogan. On Friday, he picked up another endorsement, from New York mayor and erstwhile 2020 candidate Bill de Blasio.
If Bernie Sanders isn’t the Democratic front-runner at this point, the word has little meaning. He’s far from a lock for the nomination, but his path ahead appears to be the clearest of any of his competitors.
“He can resonate with people of all ages.”
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Goofy Elizabeth Warren Weak
Arguably his most infamous nickname job, ABC News reported that Trump first referred to Senator Warren as “goofy” on Twitter on May 6. Considering that Warren often takes Trump to task for his racist, sexist, and overall disturbing remarks, Trump probably should have thought a little harder about his moniker for Warren. On a serious note, it seems incredibly insensitive for Trump to refer to Warren as “goofy” after she challenged him on his discriminatory rhetoric.
After compiling this list, I’ve realized that every single one of the nicknames The Donald so artfully created could easily be used to refer to the man himself. This whole name-calling thing feels more than a little “goofy” to me.
Is Moderna Really Better Than Pfizeror Is It Just A Higher Dose
Its possible that a good deal of the difference in the shots performance can be summed up with a simple phrase: More is better.
Way back in February, when COVID-19 vaccines were still largely restricted to the most vulnerable among us, public-health leaders were determined to send a unified message: Dont worry about the differences among the vaccines. All three of them are really quite good, and people should take the one thats most available to them, Anthony Fauci said on Meet the Press.
Now that hundreds of millions of vaccine doses have been distributed in the United States, we have plenty of reason to doubt that story. A recent study of more than half a million U.S. veterans showed that the Johnson & Johnson shots protection against infection had plummeted from 88 percent to 3 percent by mid-August, while the other vaccines effectiveness had declined much less. Research published in the past few months also signals that Modernas shot beats out Pfizers in terms of both antibody count and hospitalizations prevented, while a National Institutes of Health study released earlier this month found that Modernas booster shot lifted participants antibody levels a bit more than Pfizers, and that both mRNA boosters were miles ahead of J& Js.
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Bernie Sanders Rips Trump Over Comments About Election Integrity
Trumps strategy to delegitimize this election and to stay in office if he loses is not complicated, the Vermont senator contended.
09/24/2020 03:10 PM EDT
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Sen. Bernie Sanders tore into President Donald Trump on Thursday, delivering an indictment of the presidents recent comments that doubted the integrity of the November election and portraying him as an imminent threat to democracy.
It is terribly important that we actually listen to and take seriously what Donald Trump is saying, Sanders said in an address at George Washington University in Washington.
The Vermont independent then went on to catalog all of Trumps recent public statements about the election, including several weeks ago when the president claimed that the only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election and his repeated jibes about serving more than the two terms allowed by the Constitution.
Despite Trumps constant complaints about supposed mass voter fraud in elections, Sanders pointed to several studies including the conclusion of Trumps own White House commission on the matter that have found voter fraud to be exceedingly rare.
He also noted that Trump himself appeared to encourage voter fraud earlier this month when heurged North Carolina voters to attempt to vote twice as a test of mail-in voting systems.
But Sanders pegged a large portion of his speech to more recent events.
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New States New Troubles
As the focus turns to Nevada, which holds its caucus a week from Saturday, Sanders is facing criticism from a different direction. The state’s powerful Culinary Union is circulating literature suggesting Sanders’s plan for replacing private health insurance with a government-run programme will abolish their union-negotiated plans.
The union then released a statement saying that Sanders supporters, upon learning of the union’s criticism, had “viciously” attacked the organisation.
Already Sanders’ Democratic opponents, sensing a vulnerability in Nevada, are positioning themselves as defenders of union healthcare plans.
“Let’s be clear: attacks on the union are unacceptable,” Klobuchar wrote in a tweet. “I come from a family of proud union members and I know when unions are strong, America is strong”
Four years ago Nevada was the staging ground for Clinton’s counterattack, as she won over union support in Las Vegas hotels and restaurants – even without an outright endorsement.
If Sanders stumbles in Nevada again, the momentum he gained over the past two weeks could be lost, opening the door for one of the candidates he beat in New Hampshire – or for another, unexpected candidate who looms on the horizon in the weeks ahead.
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List Of Nicknames Used By Donald Trump
Former U.S. PresidentDonald Trump became widely known during the 2016 United States presidential election and his subsequent presidency for using nicknames to criticize or otherwise express commentary about media figures, politicians, and foreign leaders.
The list excludes commonly-used hypocorisms such as “Mike” for “Michael” or “Steve” for “Steven”, unless they are original to Trump. Nicknames that Trump did not originate are annotated with footnotes.
The list also includes nicknames used by figures associated with Trump, and nicknames he has promoted via retweeting.
Frankly Id Rather Run Against Bloomberg Than Bernie Sanders
The President of the United States, Donald Trump has also joined these debates amid the ups and downs that Sanders is currently facing. He attacked another democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg but defended Sanders by saying, Frankly, Id rather run against Bloomberg than Bernie Sanders, because Sanders has followers. Bloombergs just buying his way in. Only days after his comments, Trump once again tweeted in support of his political rival by saying: They are taking the Democrat nomination away from him, and theres very little he can do. A Rigged System! These were two obvious cases where Trump made statements in favor of Sanders, attacking the moderates of the Democratic Party. It is possible to read Trumps tweets in two ways, as a political mind-game or genuine political empathy.
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American Parents Dont Get How Much Life Is About To Improve
If Democrats get Bidens proposals across the finish line, child care might finally be a workable, affordable option for millions.
In 1971, the United States came within a pen stroke of having a functional child-care system. With bipartisan support, Congress passed the Comprehensive Child Development Actwhich would have created a publicly funded, state-run program with parent payments on a sliding scale of affordabilitybut President Richard Nixon vetoed it. Almost exactly 50 years later, the nation once again stands on the precipice of revolutionizing its child-care system. If Democrats can get their Build Back Better package across the finish line, the child-care and pre-K provisions would be arguably the greatest victory for American families in several generations.
Many may not realize quite yet just how enormous a change is coming. Even before the pandemic, about half of Americans lived in child care deserts. And when parents can find a slot, the cost is often backbreaking. The pandemic has made a bad situation catastrophic. Within the next few years, however, millions of American families will have access to an ample supply of free or very low-cost child care. It is no exaggeration to say that this will be a life-changing benefit for many of them.
Trump Will Rightly Call Sanders Socialist
In fact, Sanders lost to Clinton by more than 200,000 votes in the nine states of the Midwest. In the three onetime Blue Wall battleground states, she topped him by over 45,000 votes, though he beat her in Wisconsin and edged her by a point in Michigan. In Ohio, Clinton won by 14 points and nearly 166,000 votes. The best you can say about this Sanders argument is that he didnt lose as badly in the Midwest as he did elsewhere.
Indeed, in the Sunbelt, the other area that Democrats hope to make a general election battleground in 2020, Sanders got absolutely crushed. He lost Florida 64-33%, Arizona 58-40%, North Carolina 55-41% and Texas 65-33%. Taken together, Clinton trounced Sanders in those four states by more than 1.2 million votes.
And of course, those were only primary voters. What would the general electorate make of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.? We know that the Trump campaign will seek to label any Democratic nominee a socialist a regular Republican tactic that usually goes nowhere because Democratic nominees have never really been socialists.
Sanders is different, though. As he said in a 1983 political debate: I am a socialist of course Im a socialist.
The charge would stick, because this is an identity that he himself has proudly trumpeted. And most Americans view socialism negatively, by a margin of 42-55%. That would be quite a weight around a nominees neck in a general election.
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What Trump And Sanders Have In Common
Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are the two most surprising candidates to emerge as major factors in the 2016 presidential race. They draw the biggest crowds. Theyre shouty. But there the resemblance ends, Adele M. Stan insists, in an American Prospectcolumn that calls the comparison the latest stupidity from Punditville.
Far be it from me to reflexively defend my hometown. But Stan is not the only one making this point Ive heard it from others on the left, who shudder at any likeness being drawn between their populist hero and the other sides. The thing is, theyre wrong, and the pundits are right.
Trump and Sanders share an angry tone and a raw, un-politician-like affect that their supporters find refreshingly authentic. But the similarities dont end there by any means. Trump and Sanders have a remarkable number of policy stances in common. Heres a quick list:
- Both oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.
- Both support maintaining or expanding current levels of Social Security benefits.
- Both support some upper-income tax hikes.
- Both lament the pernicious role of money in politics .
- Both opposed the Iraq war and believe the money spent on it could have been put to better use domestically.
- Both have been known to worry that increased immigration could depress working-class wages.
- Both have flip-flopped on gun control.
Theres no getting around the fact that Trump and Sanders have a lot in common. Maybe liberals ought to just embrace it.
The Atlantic
