I like Sanders and will certainly support him if chance he gets the nomination, but I think the chances of that happening are fair at best. And his chances of winning the general election? Let me put it this way. I have heard no fewer than four people in the past week refer to him as a communist (to clarify, these weren't media blowhards but everyday people in my circle of acquaintance). To be sure, they are getting spoon fed these notions by whatever news/opinion outlets they pay attention to, but it speaks volumes to me that such ideas have already started taking root. The Republican campaign strategy against Sanders will be childishly easy to craft if he is the nominee. Just keep hammering on that one point, repeat the lie until it becomes "truth", and divert everyone's attention away from any kind of substantive debate of the issues.
I hope I'm wrong, but I think it would be a slaughter of Goldwater/McGovern/Mondale proportions regardless of what idiot the GOP may nominate.
I mean -- Jesus! -- they've successfully painted Carter (a centrist), Obama (another centrist), and the Clintons (right of Obama) as dangerous pie-in-the-sky liberals or "worse". What they would do to Sanders is sadly predictable. Perhaps Sanders has more fight in him than I credit him with. I truly hope so. He's going to need it.
But anyone who thinks that merely having the right candidate elected to the Presidency will serve as a corrective and shift the political landscape even slightly leftward is dreaming. This is something that will have to happen throughout society, at the ground level. Where opinion goes, there go the politicians, "evolving" on the issues. And that will take a long time, I'm afraid. Years of the Right poisoning the well won't be undone any time soon.
Perhaps when big money is finally removed from the political system (hey, I can dream!), when there is eventually a core of truly liberal members of Congress who can't be marginalized and shouted down, and when more state capitols are in the hands of more liberal governors and congresses, then the stage will be set for a transformative liberal POTUS. Until then, any left-leaning President will face the same prospects that Obama has dealt with ever since he took the oath.
I hope I'm wrong, but I think it would be a slaughter of Goldwater/McGovern/Mondale proportions regardless of what idiot the GOP may nominate.
I mean -- Jesus! -- they've successfully painted Carter (a centrist), Obama (another centrist), and the Clintons (right of Obama) as dangerous pie-in-the-sky liberals or "worse". What they would do to Sanders is sadly predictable. Perhaps Sanders has more fight in him than I credit him with. I truly hope so. He's going to need it.
But anyone who thinks that merely having the right candidate elected to the Presidency will serve as a corrective and shift the political landscape even slightly leftward is dreaming. This is something that will have to happen throughout society, at the ground level. Where opinion goes, there go the politicians, "evolving" on the issues. And that will take a long time, I'm afraid. Years of the Right poisoning the well won't be undone any time soon.
Perhaps when big money is finally removed from the political system (hey, I can dream!), when there is eventually a core of truly liberal members of Congress who can't be marginalized and shouted down, and when more state capitols are in the hands of more liberal governors and congresses, then the stage will be set for a transformative liberal POTUS. Until then, any left-leaning President will face the same prospects that Obama has dealt with ever since he took the oath.
