So you are ready for the world
to, ‘feel the Bern,’ and want to send him to the White House. I completely understand the attraction. He seems to be the one politician on the trail
who believes what is coming out of his mouth.
(Yes I believe everyone else is jockeying for power, or their own
egos.) Before you get too overly
critical of anything I would say here please realize a couple things about
me. I am a self-described, ‘bleeding
heart liberal,’ and in college in VT in the1980's, actually voted for Sanders when
he ran for congress.
You’d better be ready to bring Howard
Dean back NOW!
Howard
Dean yelled, ‘Heee Haw,’ at a political rally in 2004 and the democratic
establishment ran him out of town like a crazy person. What was really sad is we kept telling
ourselves we wanted different, and then we nominated a DC insider, and
lost. But that wasn’t the end for Howard
Dean, because he was different, he had a ground game, and a 50 state strategy
that gave the Democrats the House and Senate 2 years later. Now you say you want Bernie Sanders to bring
single payer healthcare, infrastructure spending, Wall Street reform, and free
college. You’d better call Howard Dean
and put together a plan to win majorities in both houses, possibly bordering on
super majorities. (In the next 8
months.) A Sander’s agenda, as he lays
it out, will not even make it out of the parking lot of the Whitehouse if you
are not willing to get him the support he needs in the House and Senate. If you are willing to support every
democratic member, and un-seat two-thirds of the republican members, and
senators, a Sanders agenda would stand a chance. So call Howard Dean and see if he’s
busy.
Politics is a game with multiple teams
on the field at once:
Imagine
if you will a Superbowl with 6 or 7 teams on the field at once. That’s precisely what politics in DC is
like. You have the Whitehouse, the
House, the Senate, K-Street, each political party, and last but not least, the
people. At any given time at least 3 of
these ‘teams’ are fighting to try to score at once. What made a Kennedy, a Reagan, a Clinton, and
sometimes even an Obama special is largely misunderstood. Looking back, people say to get this or that
passed these Presidents got different factions to work together all at
once. Not true. What they did was got ‘other teams’ to sit
down so we can actually score. At any
given time at least 2 or 3 of the above listed teams are going to oppose what
you are trying to do. Two or three teams
are ‘with you’, but always seem to be moving in different directions. Conventional wisdom is that you must have the
political capital to win them over, and moving ‘your way.’ What you need is the political capital to get
them to ‘sit this one out.’ So you’re
only fighting a war on 2 or 3 fronts, and not having to wrestle the ball from
your own teammates. If you’re going to
send Bernie to the Whitehouse you had better be ready to pressure all interest
groups and government officials pretty much constantly so his agenda has a
fighting chance.
The only things in DC that ever need to
be paid for are social programs:
Stop
telling me how much each new Joint Strike Fighter costs, they are going to keep
making it not matter who protests, please stop complaining about it. The stupid thing, which the generals don’t
want by-the-way, is made in over 30 congressional districts, so it’s here
forever. Yes, I know tax cuts were paid
for by going into Al Gore’s ‘lock-box’ raiding social security, and 2 wars, and
what will end up being six trillion dollars in spending was put on the Chinese
credit card. If you want a COLA for
social security, it needs to be paid for.
An extension of unemployment insurance, it needs to be paid for. Increase in SNAP benefits, you’d better
figure out how it will be paid for. No
one is going to touch defense spending, the only that might happen is it will
increases by less, but it will increase.
No one is going to raise taxes on the 1%, or even the top 10% to pay for
anything, so stop thinking they will. If
you want to ‘win’ this argument you’re going to have to go into an economics
argument about the circular flow of money, and show how infrastructure and
social spending benefits a community two and three fold. But you had better figure out how you’re
going to pay for it, because they are social programs, and according to
Washington must be paid for.
‘It’s the
economy stupid,’ won’t work for Bernie:
The
very second he put the word Socialist in his title; Democratic Socialist, he
stopped arguing about what Americans think is the ‘known’ economy. (The last sentence is not true, I wanted to
give you a preview of what the general election will look like.) We have been sold the concept for years that
we are a purely capitalistic country, and the likes of Bill Gates and Steve
Jobs could not happen in a socialist nations.
(Also completely not true, ask Richard Branson.) First off, we have had
socialistic aspects to our economy for 70-plus years. (Just ask the bankers on Wall Street in
2008.) When we let the free market take
care of itself the Great Depression went on for a decade, but when the
government intervened on the side of the bankers, (2008) they recovered in
three. That is not how American’s view
ourselves, we are under the impression the land of opportunity cannot work with
socialism. The minute society has an obligation to help
another; we are robbing opportunity from someone. If you want Bernie’s economic message to ring
true throughout the country, you are going to have to convince people you can
simultaneously help the less fortunate, and increase opportunity. This is a tough sell; we’ve always been told
it’s one or the other.
