No one on the political horizon can stir my voting allegiance. And, no one ever has. My vote like so many other voters goes to the lesser evil. Too often the greatest pull is to not vote at all.Now that 2016 presidential hopefuls are at stage left or right, no one captures my undivided interest.
Take Bernie Sanders, Vermont’s Senator who is dancing on the edge of the presidential hat ring. At first glance, his recent 12-point national economic program enumerates what many in our state would expect from him: job creation, wages, unions, in-sourcing, climate and fossil fuel concerns, trade policies, equal pay, break up big banks, wealth disparity, Medicare-for-all, Social Security and tax reform – all quintessential Bernie.
Good stuff, huh? Regrettably, though, it simply lacks imagination. After a long career of advocating much of the same thing, it would be nice to see what success Burlington’s son has brought to the nation. But it’s a long haul from serving up rhetoric to putting food on the table.
Bernie’s uphill trudge trying to better serve the people hasn’t often morphed into making political hay. That he is more of a spokesman, not a statesman suggests his economic plan is pedestrian oratory that falls flat without a track record.
What the senator lacks in ability he makes up for in durability. Yet, even the strongest steel can become brittle.
Is it time for Vermont voters to pass the senatorial torch to a new generation?
~Vidda Crochetta
Reprinted from The Burlington Free Press Jan 1, 2015
Won't run in Democratic primaries unless he thinks he can win
Sanders, 73, thinks that mounting a third-party campaign might face insuperable barriers to ballot access. If so, the nation is not nearly as unhappy as Sanders thinks it should be.
Sanders, however, insists that he is no Norman Thomas, who ran not to win but to leaven the nation’s political conversation with new ideas. Sanders says he will not run in Democratic primaries unless he thinks he can win.
Sanders, a powerhouse on social media, visited Iowa four times last year and relishes the kind of retail campaigning that Iowans reward. Vermont’s neighbor New Hampshire comes next in the nomination calendar.
Sanders calls himself an independent, although he caucuses and reliably votes with Senate Democrats. He also calls himself a socialist, which is naughty without being informative.
Sanders says his idea of socialism exists in Europe’s social democracies, which he considers hugely successful. Never mind the European Union’s 10 percent unemployment rate and 0.3 percent growth rate, Greece’s prostration, etc
http://www.delawareonline.com/story/opinion/contributors/2015/01/23/can-social-media-make-socialist-sanders-president/22253573/
hmmmmmm.....
A few demurrals – Bernie has made more progress toward national/general acceptance than I would have thought possible, given the huge, depressingly well-organized push to the right over the past several decades. I can’t agree that a lack of major success fighting a phalanx of determined plutocrats, a corrupt Supreme Court, an equally corrupt Congress, & a media largely tamed to its masters’ rule is a good reason to label his program as mere tired rhetoric.
As for the European economy, the mixed-sector approach produced a lot of prosperity; current woes, including the Greek collapse, can be traced to more recent policies, which mimic those that have wrecked the U.S. economy. Plutocrats are an international phenomenon – see the horendous “trade” treaties which are nearing their ultimate goal of reducing every government in the world to ornamental status, with all power to determine questions of health, safety, environmental integrity, etc., etc. becoming vested in secretive panels of corporate lawyers who are not even theoretically obligated to any electorate on the planet – just to the plutocrats. Bernie’s comment on European democratic socialism is perfectly valid, as far as it goes.
Not that I know yet who will get my vote. But I will, as always, vote. There are more of us than there are of them – lots more. If the bulk of the populace would just get up off their duffs & vote, we could win handily, & begin to undo the massive damage.
Rhetorical Failure to Metamorphose
My article was a combo or my own concerns, concerns of some people I’ve talked to about this and a Dec 2 2014 Reformer Paper Editorial.
In that editorial it enumerates Sanders “ideas” when Sanders published an outline of his “progressive” economic program.
The editorial goes on to opine that “None of the ideas outlined here come as a surprise. They are all policy issues that Sanders has been advocating his entire political career, so he knows better than anyone how difficult these challenges are. So far it’s been an uphill battle, but maybe Bernie the president will have more success than Bernie the senator.”
When a sitting government representative (Sanders) of the people has advocated his “entire career” these same 12-point economic ideas, this is a man who has been spinning his wheels far too long.
Moreover the 12-points are a regurgitation of his lifelong rhetoric. Those “determined plutocrats” you identify are the same ones who make the laws. As you know, it is not the president, but the Congress and SCOTUS who rule this nation.
Therefore, to question Sanders rhetorical failure to metamorphose into “success,“ is, indeed, entirely apropos…and worthy of topical comment.
Passing the Torch
A good part of my message touches on the notion that both Sanders (and Leahy) is politically entrenched, and just as likely as much of the problem, as the solution.
Both senators, like most politicians, have long been part of the “murky media machine.” What their real popularity is, in our state and particularly around the nation is not easily quantified.