You come off with a big Clinton bias when you say something like this.
yeah, see, this is what's starting to get to me about this cycle. because i've criticized Sanders, i'm now filled with "Clinton bias" -- as if preferring one candidate to another after careful consideration means one is incapable of clear thinking. when you do this, you sound like a conservative pundit claiming "media bias." it's feeling like the "true progressive" card is being played in moments like these.
Sanders has consistently said that the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few is the root cause of all of America's problems. he blames the banks, and the "millionaires and billionaires." that's non-specific, he's offered no real solution beyond taxes, and it's a message designed to appeal to lower socio-economic classes (and their sympathizers). that IS the definition of a demagogue.
i have searched myself, deeply, as to why i can't get on the Sanders train this election cycle. i obviously admire Obama, and have never loved HRC, especially in 2008. but as this campaign wears on, and i increasingly come to the realization that Bernie is scapegoating me by virtue of vowing to raise my taxes and tax me at the same rate as people who make double or triple my salary, and for him to say that i'm the problem, somehow, is really irritating. i agree with progressive taxation. i think single payer is better. i believe in regulation. but i also find myself right in that income bracket that's going to be squeezed the most, and also feel the most pain because i look rich on paper to Sanders -- who lumps me in, through his tax plan, as a "millionaire and billionaire" -- even if reality is vastly different.
maybe i've changed. maybe you do get more conservative when you get older. maybe if you have actually laid down roots and put stakes into the present you do have something to lose in a way that you don't when you were 23. i have every reason to want the present to get incrementally better, i have no reason to want some sort of vague "do you hear the people sing" white nonsense. adults know that problems aren't solved with "political revolution." what a dumbshit, empty phrase. if we want to take the most successful social movement of the past 10 years, same-sex marriage, we have to go back to its roots in 1993 in Hawaii. and then Vermont. or even the AIDS crisis. and then dozens of tiny battles waged over decades that culminated in a sea change. there is no revolution. there is only the hard work and toil of people willing to roll up their sleeves and do the work necessary. people like Evan Wolfson, for example.
finally, i am quite sympathetic to people who have worked for the Democratic party for years, who have worked to win the Senate, the Congress, to put up viable candidates so we can have a national party that can compete with the organized and disciplined Republicans, and then a candidate for their party's nomination turns around and calls them "establishment" and pretends that they are the enemy. i can understand the irritation of NARAL or Planned Parenthood at being called "establishment." a lot of these people are very much "fuck off, Bernie. where the fuck have you been these past 25 years? awfully fucking easy to be pure when you only have to win a state of 660,000 people. the rest of us live in the real world."
I don't know what fears Sanders plays to, and I certainly don't know how they're the same as Trump.
both men play to fear of the future in what has become the New Normal.
He's not going after immigrants and people of different religions as scapegoats. He's not blaming foreign countries for our trouble. He's not overstating foreign terrorism and ISIS. These aren't the same at all.
i'm not comparing what their blaming, i am comparing how they are appealing to voters. through fear and loathing of a vague, all-powerful group of people who are stealing their futures from them. we're talking blueprints, not specifics.
And if you don't know what the establishment is after this primary election cycle, I don't think you've been paying attention.
define it for me.
