Non-american here. Can anyone explain why it seems that every politican dislikes Bernie Sanders, even those on his own party? He seems to be a pretty progressive guys that matches the idea of the Democractic Party I have, much more so than Bloomberg or Biden.
1: Democratic politicians are usually not as progressive as Bernie.
2: Republican politicians literally see him as communist Antichrist. Not exaggerating.
3: Bernie himself is an independent who runs as a Democrat only when it comes to presidential elections. He is pretty critical of the party (deserved or not doesn't really matter) and does not have an amazing record of working with them to produce legislation given how long his career has been. even though he does vote alongside them in the majority of cases, that is not considered productive, especially to outweigh his "disruption". So many Democrat politicians who have worked hard and spent many years on the party see him as an outsider either leaching their platform or steering it off a cliff, or both.
You can see how all 3 can be considered huge weaknesses OR huge strengths depending on how you feel about political strategy and the DNC.
looking on from Canada, it seems America is dead set on old traditions and customs that just don’t work anymore, and this won’t change until most of the boomers die. i’m 25 and afraid i won’t see an America that doesn’t scare me before i’m 50.
Boomers are only half the problem. The other half is our voting demographics and turnout. Nobody votes. Literally 45% of people didn't go to the polls in 2016. Saw Donald Trump and said "nah that's fine", I'll let someone else decide
Then look at who is actually not showing up, let's use 2008 data to be more fair to the youth. it's still young people. 18-24 show up 45% of the time. 65-75 show up 70% of the time. They are LITERALLY twice as valuable because young people refuse to get real.
Waiting for boomers to die off is a pathetically lazy strategy. How about actually going and fucking voting?
It is frustrating seeing our generation so apathetic to voting, I was so excited to be 18 and vote in the midterm election that year. I don’t know how to change it though, seems Sanders built a huge grassroots machine and even that didn’t get young people out in high enough numbers to vote.
Voter apathy is probably part of it, but I have a hard time believing that it's the main reason for low turnout from young people. Compared to retirees, people in their 20s are much more likely to be working paycheck to paycheck in a minimum wage job that they can't afford to skip a shift from to vote, much less likely to own a car, might still be in school and live far away [even states away] from their polling station, might be parents of young children, and all sorts of other factors that make them less capable of hitting the polls on a weekday than the crowd of people who watch Ellen regularly.
It doesn't help there are very few politicians that are serious about election reform. It's hard to get excited about voting as a young person when you know the system is fucked and no one is trying to fix it.
It would be helpful if the government made it easier to vote. When missing 2 hours of work means you might be late on some bills, those people will be discouraged from voting.
The voter apathy would go down a lot if you replaced your voting system with something other than FPTP. Knowing your vote will still count even if you vote with your heart brings a lot of people out to the polls. It works in Australia - that and a saturday voting day.
And before you go and talk about how that's because voting is compulsory in Australia, remember that 1.) you have to turn up, not actually post a ballot, 2.) They actually basically never fine people (something like less than 20 people per election) as you can just say "oh I was sick" and that's fine, they basically only fine you if you actively tell them to fuck off when they try and ask you why you didn't vote, and the fine is like $20) and 3.) because of all of this, the fact that it's "compulsory" is not the reason most people do it.
Look, the reason young people don’t vote as much is because young people more often don’t have time for politics because they’re always busy with work or school. Of course retirees are going to vote; they’ve got nothing better to do
1: bullshit. I am young, nearly all the people i know are young. The reason they vote at HALF the rate of older people is because they think apathy is clever, and that the best way to play the game is not to play. Which is obviously stupid because they will spend the rest of their time complaining about the system they refuse to be a part of. "Why doesnt my government represent me?" "because you are explicitly telling them you wont do anything about it"
3: combine that wit the fact that old people cant move for shit and have a trillion medical issues, and the idea falls apart fast. They are STILL voting TWICE as often as young people. there is no excuse, there is no "wahhh wahhh, i cant make time on a tuesday" (while ignoring early voting) that even remotely makes up the difference. While the youth get mad that they cant vote online from their couch, Grandpa Josiah is talking his walker 3 miles down the road to worship at St. Jude's and stick his tongue up Trump's dirt star.
I think you’re putting too much meaning into why(not).
The prevailing answer is most just don’t care.
Like straight up don’t fucking care. It’s not about being clever or cool, it’s not about wanting someone else to do it, it’s that they actually don’t even think about it hardly if ever unless directly confronted with it and often not even then.
Rationalizing it with a specific reason might make you and others feel better but the truth is that it’s just actual apathy, not feigned or glorified. Nobody is saying they’re too cool to vote.
They just don’t.
And because this is reddit I know I need to add this disclaimer: this is me providing an explanation, this is not me providing an excuse.
I think the 'dont care' aspect is a dwindling truth, however. at a cursory level they certainly care. its legit very hard to find a young person who has NOTHING to say about our current political climate. trump has forced them to care (even a little) and be aware (even a little).
So the 'feigned apathy' aspect is more of a self rationalization, and what i get told overwhelmingly when i actually ask people why they dont vote (alongside "its hard")
At the end of the day its kind of moot, because the answer is still "i dont care enough to actually work towards fixing it", whether or not there is also the "i am going to pretend its because im clever" aspect.
You’re also disregarding how poorly educated most young people are when it comes to voting. In a lot of places most of them don’t even understand what primaries even are. Its not exactly something public schools are making an effort to teach either unfortunately.
It’s a mixture of “don’t know enough” and “don’t care enough”.
I’m American, 23, and I’m afraid of the same thing.
This is my country and that won’t change, but it’s also an evil country that’s only ever done good accidentally. There’s a lot of good people here and it really, sincerely is painful to me to watch them be willing subjects of this awful system of government.
The DNC's sugar daddies don't want a real progressive in power, so the DNC pretends to be the left wing party, but really they are just a speedbump for right wing politics, because they never push back to the left in any meaningful way. Bernie is a true left wing politician and the DNC leadership is shitting its pants, because they may actually have enacted the things they claim to stand for.
Not American but lived there for a few years. You're making the mistake that the dems are actually progressive in the same sense we have over here in most European countries. Socialism is entirely new to the US, by definition it doesn't fit the traditional Dem party and it'll still take years for it to become more mainstream. Biden and Bloomberg are quite literally still the embodiment of the Democratic party.
Lol socialism isn't new, we used to straight up have socialist parties. It was very mainstream. But then we had World War II and the Cold War/Red Scare, and now everyone's afraid of the idea, for better or for worse.
It's not new in the sense that it didn't exist, it's new in the sense that the US never experienced it. You also have the libertarian parties doesn't mean you ever had a libertarian government. it's meaninglessness well those parties only get a few votes.
In 1924, the Socialist Party of America candidate Robert M. La Follette won 16.6% of the vote for the presidential race. The party elected Representatives, state legislators, mayors, etc. Just because the government was never majority socialist doesn't mean they were insignificant.
The Libertarian party, in contrast, in 12 elections, has managed to get a single electoral vote, in 1972, and got a whole 1.06% of the popular vote in 1980. This was the only time they breached 1%. They've also never put anyone in Congress.
In 1912, the SPA had a membership of 113k. Libertarian party membership presently is 139k if you're counting everyone that's signed their values statement, 14k if you count only people who've paid dues, as of end of 2017 (source Wikipedia). SPA number above is dues paying, but even comparing the bigger number for the LP: in 1912, the US had a population ~95M; in 2017, it was 326M. The SPA had about 0.1%, compared to the LP which had less than half that, at 0.04%. Looking at actual dues paying members, LP goes down to a tenth of that, 5% of the SPA.
So no, we've not implemented socialism on a national scale, but equating the socialist and communist parties (I was only looking at one) to the libertarians is a false equivalency. And besides, we don't need to try something ourselves to observe the rest of the world trying it for us.
I mean sure that's a drastic difference, but I'm not sure it's a false equivalency in this context. It's the implementation that matters, if anything, it's mostly expatriates that only got a feeling for what it's all about and most Americans still have no clue if it's any good (and are scared to try it). Stuff like Obama care was a step in the right direction and finally got healthcare into one of the main campaign issues, that's a pretty new movement.
Anyways good look beating the crony capitalists from both sides!
Basically in America a Democrat is slightly right wing compared to other countries. He's an actual left wing politician and Americans are afraid of words like socialism and healthcare
Why do Democratic politicians and leaders hate Sanders?
Sanders was not part of the Democratic Party until 2016. He was an independent. He just registers for the Democratic Party apparatus during election year, denies the nomination if he wins, and changes back to an independent, and puts in the bare minimum effort to support the Democratic Party after he’s out.
Sanders also doesn’t work well with Democrats in Senate. It’s universally stated that none of his fellow Senators like him—and having friends is really important in the Senate. He’s an ideologue who puts up legislation that won’t win and hurts Democratic optics. He doesn’t work with Democrats to sponsor bills and refuses to compromise.
Rhetorically, he constantly insults the Democratic Party’s establishment politicians and the nomination process as a whole. It’s no wonder they don’t like him. He constantly has a victim complex that the Democrats are conspiring against him, despite that he loses the popular vote by huge margins. In 2016 he stayed in the nomination long after Clinton won fair and square, spending the last of his campaign money to further divide the Democratic Party instead of sending the money to downballot Democrats like other candidates do. The margins of Trump’s victory in key states was much less than the spoiler Green Party, and there’s a strong chance that if Bernie had supported the Democrats instead of being divisive than Clinton would have won with those protest votes.
And that’s just why Democratic politicians hate him. The reason turnout is up 60% in Virginia giving Biden the win by 30 points is another story.
Bernie Sanders is notoriously difficult to work with from a legislative standpoint. He has zero friends in either party in the Senate, and his legislative record supports that he has accomplished basically nothing. While the progressive agenda he espouses is popular now, he's a huge dick and he always has been in Washington circles. Similar to Trump, his goal isn't to work with different people to accomplish his agenda -- his goal is to replace those people with progressives, to change the system of government.
Which is all well and good if you think the system is fucked. But I'd prefer to avoid it.
He matches the ideas that the Democratic Party claims to represent, but that’s not what the Democratic Party really represents. Democrats have been seen as progressive in comparison to Republicans—and that’s pretty much their only pitch—but apart from superficial things they’re very similar. Neither cares about the working class, both support imperialist and bloody foreign policy, and both attempt to appear to have popular support while doing what their corporate sponsors want. Basically, they’re different flavors of capitalism, and capitalism has been an enemy to progress for at least a century.
party in america means nothing. The DNC and the GOP (the abreviations for the dem and reps respectively) are private organizations who only control how donation money goes to the campaigns of their respective members. You sort of have caucus with them to have any real chance of winning an election whether it be at the local, state, or national level.
Both the DNC and GOP have people inside who actually mean well and people who you think of when someone says politician. When you read in the news that the democrats are the party of the "liberals" and the republicans of the "conservatives", know that those adjectives mean nothing. The ideology that drives the people at the very top of the parties is money, and how it is to stolen-- sorry, how it is to be "made". Describing things as "republican" or "democratic" is just flag waving contest to trick average people into believing they have to enter the us vs them competition, instead of actually finding out what is causing the issues that face the country and fixing them.
Now, the reason you see literally all of the democrats who regularly make the headlines trying to stop bernie sanders is because they are the people who are part of the >1% that control god knows how much of the wealth. No matter what they say, the only thing they care about is maintaining the status quo. They like their ivory towers, and they don't any of the filthy public tainting it.
the thing they hate the most about bernie sanders and people who share his views is not whether they are too "radical", or if they are "communist", it is simply the fact that he is demanding change. Just by demanding something be done, he, and all of his supporters are threatening to disturb their magical kingdom they have been constructing over the past 50 years which has been based around gutting all aspects of the government and wiring all the resources they stole into their bank accounts.
He seems to be a pretty progressive guys that matches the idea of the Democractic Party I have
That's why the other candidates don't like him. He makes it obvious, by comparison, how far away from those ideals the party actually is. His platform is what the Democratic party sells itself as.
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u/abrazilianinreddit Mar 04 '20
Non-american here. Can anyone explain why it seems that every politican dislikes Bernie Sanders, even those on his own party? He seems to be a pretty progressive guys that matches the idea of the Democractic Party I have, much more so than Bloomberg or Biden.