If you listened to these arguments, you would basically understand that the guy does not take Sanders, or the ideas that he represents, seriously at all. He basically outright suggested that Sanders has some bad ideas, and warned Hillary against making the huge mistake of trying to cater to those supporters of Sanders, because her personal life, as well as her voting record, would essentially serve to discredit her.
This guy said that the worst case scenario would be that Sanders somehow knocks out Hillary, and than another Democrat, a "real" option, would be then forced to enter the race. He went on to say outright that there is no way that Sanders will ever be president.
Now, I do not know if Sanders will, in fact, reach the White House. In this day and age, with how screwed up politics is in the United States, it certainly is a hard thing to picture. The biggest challenge immediately before him would be to keep up his momentum, and to win the early primary states of New Hampshire and Iowa, and then to keep plugging away and get a surprise victory for the Democratic nomination.
Then, even if he manages that monumental feat, Sanders would have to also find a way to win the general election in a nation that tends to vote far more conservatively than the poll numbers would suggest is possible. Despite holding views that most Americans, statistically, do not agree with and tend to think outdated, Republicans keep finding ways to win elections. Almost all of them are opposed to any efforts to make healthcare more fair and accessible, almost all of them are against a sensible foreign policy to keep America out of more costly wars, almost all of them are against unions and any real collective bargaining efforts by workers, favoring instead the billionaire class. Almost all of them are opposed to gay marriage, almost all of them want religion (by which they mean Christian religion) ruling over the country, and scoff at the notion that the Founding Fathers were actually serious when they created a separation of church and state. Almost all Republicans are against legalization of marijuana, and some (like Chris Christie) suggest that residents of states that have legalized marijuana better smoke up and enjoy it now, because there will be a crackdown once they assume the Oval Office. Then again, Christie might be smoking that stuff himself if he assumes that he will, in fact, be elected the next president. Not going to happen.
But I digress. Again, the United States has tended to vote far more conservatively in national elections then the opinion polls suggest would be possible, and I suspect that the reason for this would be the electoral college system that is in place, rather than the other option of being a direct democracy. As we have seen, you can win the popular vote - and win it handily - and still lose the election. Still, that is another issue altogether.
Sanders may never get to be president, although it is not because the author of the piece that I read suggests that it is impossible, or that he is full of bad ideas. The problem is that Sanders champions ideas that, for whatever the reason, Americans view as systematically bad, like a knee jerk reaction.
Most of what Sanders would like to do is essentially make the United States work like Europe. That is to say, if Sanders had his way, Americans would get to enjoy things like a living wage, affordable and universal healthcare with a single payer system, affordable childcare, and tougher environmental policies and standards. Americans might even enjoy more vacation time, like Europeans do.
Are these ideas really so bad? If you're an American, does the idea of having six weeks of paid vacation, like Germans enjoy, really sound that unattractive? Is having an affordable healthcare system where everyone is covered from birth to death - and this proposed system would actually cost Americans less money than they pay right now - really that horrifying? Would it really be so wrong to have affordable childcare for struggling single parents?
I have asked this question before, and will ask it again, for those Americans who are vehemently opposed to such ideas - and there are plenty Americans who feel this way. But here is the question anyway:
Given that the countries that enjoy these things are themselves industrialized, first world countries with a high standard of living and quality of life, and that these western countries are all democracies, why would they keep such a system in place if it ran nearly as badly as conservative American politicians and business leaders have worked so hard to make Americans believe these things are? They have their systems in place, and they can see what is happening in the United States, where tens of millions of people still remain uninsured, even after the highly controversial passage of Obamacare, and where vacation time is at a minimum, and where childcare is often too costly for most people to afford. And always, always, they choose the systems that they have in place there over the more privatized system that Americans have.
Still, many Americans are deathly afraid of the "European socialist" system (and each European system is different, although they all do much more for their citizens than the American system does for it's people). Indeed, there is the popular perception that incorporating such a system is somehow "unAmerican" (even though President Franklin D. Roosevelt - one of the most revered and successful presidents in the nation's history - championed just such a system. Many Americans fear that going too close to that European system would essentially usher in a socialist, communist dictatorship. These irrational fears suggest that what would follow next would be a fascist state of Nazism and/or Communism (as if these two systems were identical, as if the bloodiest war in history was not fought between the two leading nations for each of these ideologies specifically because of ideological differences).
It is, of course, absurd. Think of the countries that have these "socialist" systems in place, and tell me if you think of some brutal Communist dictatorships? Is Canada a Communist utopia? Britain? Australia? New Zealand? Perhaps Germany, or the Netherlands? France? Poland? Sweden? Norway? Japan? Israel?
Yes, literally all of those countries have systems that American conservatives suggest would bring America to the verge of a Communist/fascist dictatorship, even though every one of those countries are liberal western democracies, the way the United States used to be. In fact, that democracy that used to exist in the United States has largely eroded, precisely because people can no longer afford such basic necessities of life, while the billionaire class and corporate culture have taken over, and keep grabbing more and more control, more and more profits, more and more money. All at the expense of the vast majority. It is clearly an unfair system, and Americans appear to finally be showing signs of waking up to this reality.
That is why Bernie Sanders has suddenly gained popularity and prominence. He understood, like no other prominent American politicians in either major party has, of why the standard of living has declined so badly, and what needs to be done to make it rise once again.
But what would be needed is for Americans to get past their automatic assumptions of some nightmarish scenario, and understand the facts. The system that Sanders is trying to argue for would work here, because it already works in other countries. Not just one country, some isolated incident, or something. Again, every single other industrialized power has such a system in place. In fact, the only exception is the American one, and it works horribly. Want proof? When was the last time that there was an election where major healthcare reform was not a key issue? When was the last time that you heard about people losing their homes, their jobs, or even their lives in those other countries, like we hear about happening here in the United States? Success with a more socialistic system is, again, not some isolated incident, where it happened to succeed in one, or maybe two, other countries. The isolated exception in this case is the United States, where we are the only country not to have such a system in place, and where the system that we have instead keeps failing people, time after time. That is why it is always such a huge issue, in election after election.
So, let us try to focus on the facts, and not some made up rumors, about what such a system might look like. To that end, here is a link illustrating what the nation might look like under President Sanders, if we are fortunate enough to see that come to pass, and if he is actually empowered enough to make some of the changes that he proposes.
Below that, there is a link to a New York Post article that illustrates the fear mongering, arguing that the systems in place in Scandinavia are essentially nightmares. Take a look at both, and make your own determination as to which is based on fact, and which is based on fear mongering.
What Would Life Under President Sanders Actually Look Like? The Vermont socialist's plan to make the United States more like Scandinavia. —Tim Murphy on Tue. September 15, 2015:
Sorry, liberals, Scandinavian countries aren’t utopias By Kyle SmithJanuary 11, 2015:
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