In an interview with the Guardian from his home base in Burlington, Vermont, Sanders urged the Democratic president to inject more urgency into his bid for re-election. He said that unless the president was more direct in recognising the many crises faced by working-class families his Republican rival would win.
“We’ve got to see the White House move more aggressively on healthcare, on housing, on tax reform, on the high cost of prescription drugs,” Sanders said. “If we can get the president to move in that direction, he will win; if not, he’s going to lose.”
The US senator from Vermont added that he was in contact with the White House pressing that point. “We hope to make clear to the president and his team that they are not going to win this election unless they come up with a progressive agenda that speaks to the needs of the working class of this country.”
Sanders’ warning comes at a critical time in American politics. On Monday, Republicans in Iowa will gather for caucuses that mark the official start of the 2024 presidential election.
Biden faces no serious challenger in the Democratic primaries. But concern is mounting over how he would fare against Trump given a likely rematch between them in November.
Every once in awhile I catch myself thinking about how different the world would have been if Bernie was president and it’s just so fucking sad.
I get that all the other problems would still exist, but there would be a glimmer of hope to cling on to.
I voted for Bernie and he would have been great, I always find myself thinking about Gore winning more often. I have more respect for Bernie for sure but we’d have been in such a better place by 2016. Jesus, there’s a non-zero chance that the 9/11 warnings don’t get ignored and the US definitely doesn’t invade Iraq or Afghanistan. The housing bubble would probably still have burst in a bad way but I doubt it goes down the same way. Supreme Court wouldn’t be as full of neocons and zealots.
Not just that if Gore had won and 9-11 would have still happened we would have likely seen a push away from oil starting in the early 2000s. I think Gore could’ve turned that into an opportunity to say “to hell with these middle east authoritarians and their oil, we can do better for ourselves and better for the planet.”
Unfortunately I was 6 when 9-11 happened so I didn’t have much say in these matters.
Gore would have been a timeline-changer. I would vote for him now. I wonder if he’s a viable candidate at this point?
Yeah, this was always my big one too. I’m a green at heart, but I learned a brutal lesson then, that I’ll carry inside of me forever. A lesson that has only gotten reinforced by the slow march of modern fascism.
Democracy requires dialogue, patience, empathy and compromise. The alternative is authoritarianism, and the unavoidable power struggles that come from too much centralized power in a world with ambitious humans. We need to remember that, and dialogue and compromise with our, in many ways younger-self progressives, instead of trying to corral them. We can do this. We are not too afraid.
Give em hell Bernie.
It’s possible we’d be in a better situation now. Lots of obvious things like not tossing out known facts about terrorism efforts and having a climate change awareness leadership. There’s much that would still be the same, like the system of consumerism that is the core of much of our problems. One person in a limited power seat can’t fix that, I’m not sure anything can outside of failure of the system itself. But I do think we would have at least avoided that one historic turning point that revved back up the military drive of the US. Even GWB’s administration was looking into ways of reducing the military into smaller, more mobile parts until suddenly we went into revenge mode. Or useful crisis mode.
I do wish he had been president, but I also wonder how much of his agenda he could have gotten past congress, even if Democrats were in charge. Most Democrats are, at best, about preserving the status quo and I hate having to vote for them just to stop the people who will make things even worse.
I voted for Bernie every chance I’ve had, but I genuinely doubt he could have achieved the current level of success much less something better.
Without a Congress full of like-minded people, it would have been a struggle. I think we can have someone like Bernie for president one day, but it’s people being passionate and engaging with every vote and every election.
Remember when debbie Wasserman shutlz stole the dnc nomination from bernie to give it to Hillary?
That one rug pull gave donnie the win.
Remember when this was challenged and the court ruled the Parties have no obligation to play fair
With an election coming up, the Schrodingers Leftist dilemma is in full force, even on Lemmy -
Where we’re simultaneously both powerful enough to be personally behind every Republican win of the past 20 years, and also so insignificant that we must be ridiculed and bullied at every turn to remind us that we have NO PLACE in their party they blame us for not backing.
The best part is that most of the time people hit both sides of the coin in the same comment.
I mean, he did.
The 2000 election was decided by the Supreme Court, not the voters.
A significant portion of the US population think Biden is a communist, how would Sanders have a chance of winning enough votes?
There’s a reason Trump fought so hard to have Bernie as the democratic nominee in 2020.
a significant portion of the US population thinks trump is a fascist, how would he have a chance of winning enough votes?
there’s a reason hilary fought so hard to have trump as the republican nominee in 2016.
…
am i doing it right?
I’m not doing another conversation with you so you can ghost it when it gets to difficult to counter then report my comments.
Have you seen this video yet?
Bernie’s Legacy w/ Killer Mike https://youtu.be/ZlZaVtCT5HI
Never forget the movement… Not me. Us.
He said that unless the president was more direct in recognising the many crises faced by working-class families his Republican rival would win.
No, The Guardian, you missed the whole fucking point.
The important thing Sanders said is that unless the president was more direct in recognizing the many crises faced by working-class families then our entire democracy would be destroyed.
This is an existential threat, not a goddamned motherfucking horse race, and I am sick and tired of the media supporting fascism by treating it like the latter!
I’m curious to see where you’re going with this, so please make your point instead of assuming your question will lead us there on its own.
The headline uses the word “demagogue” to describe Trump. “Demagogue” is defined as:
A political leader who seeks support by appealing to the desires and prejudices of ordinary people rather than by using rational argument.
I think OC is arguing that the article hints that Trump’s campaign is devoid of rational argument by using this word, which would imply that they aren’t exactly on Trump’s side. I’m not personally familiar with the Guardian’s political standpoint, though.
Unless the Trump is held accountable, He will most likely win. People’s material needs are important and Dem messaging has basically been hey we showed this graph so you’re not struggling and anything popular you want won’t happen. But everything bad will happen with the other guy. Being not Trump once again is a dangerous way to win the election. Trump’s cultist ass should be getting crushed.
Trump’s cultist ass should be getting crushed.
Makes me wonder what might have happened if the DNC hadn’t f**ked Bernie over, twice.
Yeah, the DNC f-ing unknowingly gave that blowhard dictator his platform.
They didnt care. DNC would rather lose with Hillary/Biden then win with Bernie.
It hurts me to think how much better a position we would be in right now if they hadn’t worked so hard to marginalize him.
Imagine how many lives would have been saved on just the pandemic disinformation alone.
And Bernie would have absolutely demolished cheetolini in the debates.
Unfortunately, the owners of this country don’t want that.
(NSFW - language)
Maybe he would have lost his aura because he wouldn’t have had the means to do what he says should be done.
Maybe he would have lost his aura
At this point Bernie’s lost at least some of it; I can’t disagree with those who’ve accused him of sheepdogging, although I think he was trying to do the best he could with what he had.
Well progressives are to blame for their incessant whining that any candidate that is not 100% progressive is absolute shit. Progressives are bitching about PEOPLE while corporatists are controlling the narrative about ISSUES.
Progressives are bitching about PEOPLE while corporatists are controlling the narrative about ISSUES.
Progressives have been banging the drum for universal health care (an ISSUE) for years, so far with no luck – (no) thanks to the corporatists.
And as for Israel (also an ISSUE), don’t get me started…
It still blows my mind he wasn’t taken into custody for sedition ON Jan 6th.
I think future historians will point to that as a major turning point in our nation’s decline.
Taking a sitting president into custody without impeachment when he is not an immediate threat would be a coup, which I imagine would be worse for democracy, though maybe not for america.
Pretty sure the final outcome of letting donny spray tan go with zero consequences is going to be him winning the last election our country ever has, so pardon me if I don’t agree with you that taking a sitting president into custody is more of a problem than a legit dictator being allowed to run for office.
i think it’s more of a milestone. we haven’t actually changed trajectory at all.
As someone active in politics since the late 80s, I can say we have certainly lost a number of our civil liberties, fascists feel emboldened enough to go full masks-off on the floor of Congress, and we just had a fucking soft coup attempt, so yea our trajectory has been on the downward side of parabolic since Ragass Reagan was allowed to ooze into the white house.
Biden really needs to understand how unpopular he is. Not that he will, but I can dream.
I really don’t want another run of Trump pardoning psychopaths and doing what he wants. But democracy is basically in the hands of Dems and they scrap by when it comes to connecting with people or even giving them a vision post beating Trump.
The only way Trump is “connecting” with people is by telling them grandiose lies and making impossible promises.
Annoyingly, a shitton of people are willing to go along with those lies without thinking about it or questioning anything.
Sure he’s unpopular with progressives and the youth.
Most blue voters are older people more interested in the status quo and in any other country with a sane Overton window would be called conservatives.
And the idealism of youth can easily convince them that a 3rd party vote is a meaningful protest against the DNC’s lack of progressive action.
Biden won’t win without progressives and youth. Pandering to the center is how you lose. Trump won bc he did not play to the center.
By progressive and youth, you mean millennials, right? Who are as old as… 40.
It’s kinda crazy since, what will the other wlsode do to help? There is a strong history of actively harming everyone but the ultra rich.
It’s like being mad at my boss because he isn’t telling me how he’s going to help me on my career progression, and deciding I’ll switch bosses to a corrupt prison guard instead.
The danger isn’t dems voting R.
It’s poor turnout.
And when poor turnout happens, Republicans win.
Unfortunately the way I see it is Biden will lose for two reasons:
- Hes old af
- Inflation
Regardless of policies or how terrible the alternative is. I dont think most people are going to think much past “Things are expensive now, and oh great a super old white dude”.
Love how they can blame inflation on Joe Brandon, but they refused to blame 45 for anything for 4 years.
Inflation started under Trump and Trump is just as old
That’s not the perception though.
Man I would love to see this, but its one of those things that I will believe when I see. I hope I have to eat my words on that too. Even if so, I dont think decriminalization would mean much to people in terms of getting out to vote. Most people who are really passionate about this over other issues have had the states handle it for them already. Dems waited too long for Federal Decriminalization to be a big motivator in a national election in my opinion.
If biden loses, a big part of why will be the single issue “genocide Joe” kids who, like their predecessors, The Bernie Bros, took their vote and went home over something that was much smaller than the potential loss of democracy.
Downvote all wish, the fact remains: had the Bernie bros not thrown a temper tantrum, there’s a good chance 2016 could have turned out differently.
Disagreeing does not make this untrue.
When do we get to blame the shit candidate who lost instead? Bernie didn’t ignore and not campaign in multiple states because he thought they were in the bag, that was Hillary. Bernie didn’t conspire with the dnc to put up the worse polling candidate because it was “their turn”, that was Hillary. Bernie supporters didn’t say “we don’t need your vote” to the progressive voters, those were Hillary supporters.
This shit makes me want to write Bernie in instead of holding my nose and voting for Biden like I did last time.
The whole ‘bernie bros’ voting red is a digital propaganda point started by t_d, and spun off into 3 different Bernie subreddits that coincidentally were all modded by people from t_d.
They worked tirelessly to flood facebook so it LOOKED like ‘bernie bros are gonna vote against their best interests in spite’.
I mean there were a few actual progressives that flip flopped but most of them voted Jill Stein.
7 Palestinians are dying every minute.
Won’t someone think of America’s democracy?
Having contempt for voters is like blaming the weather when it rains. Maybe the candidate should have came prepared with an umbrella, but here we are.
He’s right. Biden is coasting into this election. Reminds me of Hillary in 2016.
Eh, Obama went hard on election stuff and so did Bill. This hubris seems recent and tied to a belief that Trump isn’t a serious candidate.
Did the same thing with Dubya.
“That other guy is terrible” is a really bad way to go into an election.
Neither side knows how to fix things, but one of them lies and says it does. Being the incumbent doesn’t help either, because if you do say you know how to fix things the obvious reply is “well why haven’t you done it then?”
It’s almost like it’s on purpose… Like the offense and defense of the capital class…
Surely the people that own everything wouldn’t use the government to get what they want.
What, regulatory capture is real? Surely voting harder will fix that.
Centrist Democrats would rather lose and have a hereditary dictatorship run by the Trump family than treat workers with respect.
Bernie is in Biden’s back pocket, he’s incredibly influential to the presidency right now. Bernie has helped Biden come up with nearly every progressive policy he’s rolled out. This statement actually will mean something.
Bernie has helped Biden come up with nearly every progressive policy he’s rolled out.
Which ones?
He played an important part in pressuring rail companies to give workers more sick time and remove the advanced notice clause, the Inflation Reduction Act, Build Back Better, the infrastructure bill, and several executive orders.
Because they’re just rich people. When are people going to realize they’re all just rich people. None of them will ever do anything for you. We can either eat them or die.
Your comment seems detached from reality, Biden appointed people to the national labor board and they changed the rules so that when companies try to do their anti-union fuckery, unions get automatically implemented:
https://prospect.org/labor/2023-08-28-bidens-nlrb-brings-workers-rights-back/
This is why we’ve been seeing so many successful unionizations and strikes lately.
I think the operative word in his post was “centrist.” By that, I’m sure he means center to right Dems like Pelosi and Manchin.
The corporatist profit loving ones who would rather climb a ladder to tell a lie than stand on solid ground and speak truth.
https://fortune.com/2024/01/03/members-of-congress-profit-from-stocks-2023/
Neither of these people, nor the dozens of lawmakers like them, support unions in a real way. They care about money first and appearance of support to their constituents second. Pelosi keeps getting reelected because she’s the biggest money maker for the DNC.
Pelosi keeps getting elected because she’s one of the best Representatives and speakers in the US history. What a fucking muppet
You can’t cherry pick Biden’s appointments and claim worker support. Biden also appointed Janet Yellen and reappointed Jerome Powell who are both in an outright war with the working class. Fuck Joe Biden.
