Progressives (Liberals)

It really is very simple, Blatham. They probably understand it, but something makes them keep beating their insane “Bernie or bust” drum, and damn the hindmost.

I agree with your earlier post about discontinuing beating one’s head on a wall and expecting pleasant sensations. I also understand how maddening it is to see the obstinate adhesion to the “only chosen one” spiel, and how difficult it is to not challenge it.

There is no Dem candidate who is without negatives, edgar. If your antenna wasn't compromised, you would perceive the same "tug" in my notions about Biden or Harris or Mayor Pete or even Warren (though my tempered favor falls to her).

In point of fact - and this is key - is that this "tug" you perceive is not about Sanders but rather about that element in his base which:
1) equates the negatives of the two parties (self-evidently nuts)
2) suggests that if Bernie isn't the nominee, then there's no sense voting
3) manifests an absolutism which would deem any doubts about their candidate as somehow inappropriate or even profane.

Your tilt to Warren is a tilt to neoliberalism, Republican values and dishonest representation of her aims if elected.

That's hogpoop edgar. You guys toss the term "neoliberal" around as if you'd actually spent time studying and defining the term. To imagine that Warren and Hayek or Krugman and Hayek are the same is just seriously uniformed.
See Here

Warren obviously does not support deregulation of financial markets. Her work on TARP and the consumer financial protection bureau was involved with the opposite. She's not an advocate of privatization nor, for gods sake, shifting away from state welfare provisions.

You're just repeating falsities you've read.

Warren wants to reign in gangster capitalism by reintroducing rules. Her plan for a wealth tax hardly represents "Republican values". And anyone with more than a modestly liberal platform is going to have to be prepared to compromise because the numbers aren't there to elect a socialist Congress.

Precisely.

She will also keep the forever wars alive, based on her votes in which she never saw a military budget increase she didn't like.

I find it somewhat disheartening to think that the small coterie of true believers and purists pushing the "only chosen one" spiel on this message board probably represent a a significant faction of activist voters. While both the pragmatists and the purists can discuss and debate the issues here in relative civility I imagine that there are large numbers of Sanders supporters who aren't having these discussions and are primarily relying on material connected to or supportive of the campaign.

Where does she say that she "likes" military budget increases?


bloomberg

Speaking of material to support Warren is in point of fact, a leftist liberal: She has revealed her Medicare for All plan and how she plans for it to be paid for.

In a million years I can't imagine it passing congress, unless we enjoy a longer period of time we had when Obamcare was first past (mostly (maybe all) along party lines) was first past in congress and no one challenges it in court which would end up in Today's Supreme Court. (of which anyone following that train of thought can figure how the odds are staked against liberals/progressives/democrats)

Elizabeth Warren Releases $20.5 Trillion Plan to Pay for ‘Medicare for All’

Speaking as my own "centrist" self, I would be tickled pink and satisfied if her plan came to fruition and was allowed to follow it without hindrance from the SC.

Speaking as my true pragmatic self, I can't see both happening, mostly the latter. So, I would hope there is a plan b and C for compromising.

A perfect example of Warren double talk is how she claims at times to support universal health care at one event, then suggests there are different solutions at another event, then supports it again another day, then says it will cost two million jobs if enacted after that.

She being a "capitalist to her bones" and standing to applaud Trump, her decision to accept big donor money - On and on, she can't be trusted to live up to the public persona she is building.

Well there are different solutions. And it will cost a lot of jobs. Do the purists think that these people are somehow "tainted" because they work in the insurance industry? Two days ago I heard Warren expressing concern for the people whose jobs would be lost and suggesting ways to take care of them and help them find new jobs, some of which might be in the new Medicare for All system.

I might point out, edgarblythe, that one of Sanders' accomplishments was the Veterans Affairs Reform bill which he co-authored with John McCain. McCain gave Sanders great credit for his willingness to compromise in order to get a bipartisan bill that would pass.

President Obama on being woke and cancel culture: 'That's not activism'

Good points.

Aside: in my previous post on this thread, I meant passed or pass as the case was in that post.

I am wondering how he will be able to compromise and keep his base on issues such Medicare for All and other issues, such as College for All (however you term it) as I consider to be one of the most impractical liberal plans out there. There are less costly alternatives such as on the job training and two year college...

I thought I'd do a google search on this idea. Not surprisingly, all the leading results look to be from Sanders' aligned folks. But here's one from the Intercept (which does tend to support Sanders too)
Intercept

So that absolutist claim is false in this case at least. I'm going to do some deeper research today.

In the prior year, 2018, again Warren did NOT vote in support of the NDAA.
Here

In 2017, Warren gave a yes vote while Sanders voted no.

In 2013, Sanders voted yes for the NDAA Here

Robert Reich is a turd in many ways, but there is some good info here nevertheless. Just read this in Truthdig. He thinks Warren is a true progressive, but he is pretty spot on otherwise.
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In the conventional view of American politics, Joe Biden is a moderate while Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are on the left and Donald Trump is on the right.

This conventional view is rubbish. Today’s great divide is not between left and right. It’s between democracy and oligarchy.

There are no longer “moderates.” There’s no longer a “center.” The most powerful force in American politics today is anti-establishment fury at a rigged system.

Four decades ago, when America had a large and growing middle class, the left wanted stronger social safety nets and more public investment in schools, roads and research. The right sought greater reliance on the free market.


In those days, a general election was like a competition between two hotdog vendors on a long boardwalk extending from left to right. To maximize sales, each had to move to the middle. If one strayed too far left or right, the other would move beside him and take all sales from the rest of the boardwalk.

This older American politics is now obsolete. As wealth and power have moved to the top and the middle class has shrunk, more Americans have joined the ranks of the working class and poor.

Most Americans – regardless of whether they were once on the left or right – have become politically disempowered and economically insecure. Nowadays it’s the boardwalk versus private jets on their way to the Hamptons.

As Rahm Emmanuel, Barack Obama’s chief of staff and former mayor of Chicago, told the New York Times: “This is really the crack-up. Usually, fights are Democrats versus Republicans, one end of Pennsylvania versus the other, or the left versus the right. Today’s squabbles are internal between the establishment versus the people that are storming the barricades.”

In 2016, Trump harnessed many of these frustrations, as did Sanders.

The frustrations today are larger than they were in 2016. Corporate profits are higher, as is CEO pay. Markets are more monopolized. Wealth is more concentrated at the top. Although the official unemployment rate is lower, most peoples’ incomes have gone nowhere and they have even less job security.

Meanwhile, Washington has become even swampier. Big corporations, Wall Street and billionaires have flooded it with money and lobbyists. Trump has given out all the tax cuts, regulatory rollbacks and subsidies they have ever wanted. The oligarchy is in charge.

Why hasn’t America risen up in protest? Because American democracy was dysfunctional even before Trump ran for president. The moneyed interests had already taken over much of it.

It’s hard for people to get very excited about returning to the widening inequalities and growing corruption of the decades before Trump. Which partly explains why Biden is foundering.

At the same time, Trump and his propagandists at Fox News have channeled working-class rage against the establishment into fears of imaginary threats such as immigrants, socialists and a “deep state.”

But a large majority of Americans – right and left, Republican as well as Democrat – could get excited about moving toward a real democracy and economy that worked for the many.

This is why the oligarchy is so worried about Warren’s rise to frontrunner status in some polls.

Politico reports that Democratic-leaning executives on Wall Street, in Silicon Valley and across the corporate world are watching her with increasing panic.

“Ninety-seven percent of the people I know in my world are really, really fearful of her,” billionaire Michael Novogratz told Bloomberg.

These Democratic oligarchs hope Biden, or perhaps Pete Buttigieg or Amy Klobuchar, can still take Warren out.

In just the third quarter, Buttigieg raised about $25,000 from executives at Wall Street firms including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and hedge fund giants like Bridgewater, Renaissance Technologies and Elliott Management. And another $150,000 from donors who described their occupation as “investor”.

If Biden implodes and neither Buttigieg nor Klobuchar takes the lead from Warren, Wall Street and corporate Democrats hope former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg will ride into the primary at the last minute.

It won’t work. The stark reality is that Democrats cannot defeat Trump’s authoritarian populism with an establishment candidate who fronts for the oligarchy.

The only way Democrats win is with an agenda of fundamental democratic and economic reform, such as provided by Warren and also by Sanders.

Unless Democrats stand squarely on the side of democracy against oligarchy, the risk on election day is that too many Americans will either stand with Trump or stay home.

Sanders is a guy who can change the US, for the better. Look at the movement he has built, the effect he had on the political debate and on motivating young people and electing some of them to Congress. He can get more of that good work done from the White House. He is the best chance you guys get to reform your disfunctional democracy.

O-kay. Shrugs.