Bernie is looking like he'll run in 2020
Submitted by gjohnsit on Mon, 11/27/2017 - 4:39pm
It'll soon be time to decide how you feel about another Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, because Bernie seems to be preparing for it.
Bernie Sanders is taking steps to address longstanding political shortcomings that were exposed in 2016, ahead of another possible presidential bid in 2020.
From forging closer ties to the labor movement to shoring up his once-flimsy foreign policy credentials, the moves have provided the senator inroads into party power structures that largely shunned him in favor of Hillary Clinton last year.
...Sanders has been working closely with figures who are close to the party establishment he's long railed against, like American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. And he's been meeting with international affairs experts such as Bill Perry, a defense secretary in the administration of President Bill Clinton, around a series of speeches designed to define his international vision, one year after running a campaign heavy on domestic policy and light on the rest of the world.
I have mixed feelings about this.
#1) It should be obvious that Bernie has no intention of running as an independent.
#2) I don't like him getting into bed with these people.
#3) OTOH, he proved on the Unity Tour that he can get in bed with them and they still can't change him, nor get him to shut up.
#4) Biden has slightly stronger support among Democrats, so Bernie can't ignore the establishment and still win.
What Our Revolution, Justice Democrats, and DSA does in 2018/2019 might make all the difference in whether a progressive enters the White House in 2021.
Comments
monetary corruption
For five minutes, until the next snap election. Or until the state utterly fails.
The problem isn't the superior Presidential/Congressional System. The problem is monetary corruption -- to which no form of political power is immune.
We in the USA see the problems first-hand, and also because once corruption occurs, it's exacerbated by the very things that make the Presidential/Congressional System superior to the Westminster Parliamentary one: stability, clearly divided and defined powers, etc. When these are good, they're the best in the world; but when corrupted by major donor money, the same things suck worse than anything else on Earth.
We're dealing with the latter situation right now.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
no nation needs a parliamentary system
Agreed. Parliaments are inefficient, ineffective, and unstable -- by design of the English and French Kings who invented them. The idea was to maintain the appearance of democracy while the Monarch still held the real power day-to-day.
Or in the many utterly failed states whose governments were patterned after Britain's.
Take away the powerful Monarch, and a Parliamentary system heads straight towards anErisian Chaos. The British have gotten away with it as long as they have only because of their Monarchy's hybrid nature; and the more power is stripped from the Monarch, the more Chaotic her governance becomes.
The sole impediment to alternative political parties in the USA is oligarchical money. Neutralize the effects of that corruption, and we'd have multiple parties here, too.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Bernie Sanders is taking
Bernie Sanders is taking steps to address longstanding political shortcomings that were exposed in 2016
You mean like actually investigating election fraud when it appears to have happened?
Sometimes I love you, Cass.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
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