I'm a boomer, I was raised on desperate long shots on achieving social causes,

[HereSince1628]

Bernie Sanders, and Elizatbeth Warren appeal to the idealistic core of what we hoped for.

Go ahead, tell me Bernie and/or Elizabeth are impossibilities in the political landscape.

So was the attempt of a demure woman dying of breast cancer to take down Dow Chemical and the use of DDT in America.

So was the anti-Vietnam war movement, now long vindicated...

SO WAS A REPUBLICAN signing into law and administering the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.

And I do remember the Mets long tenure in the basement of baseball. Look at them now!

The impossible, isn't really impossible It just takes a bit more imagination and a willful suspension of belief that only establishment ideas work.

[upaloopa]

1. We will all know soon enough who is the Dem

candidate. I hope we are more civil than 2008. I hated coming here then. I think that was the beginning of our pissing contests and food fights. 2008 made us just like every other board where you come to play a game of gotcha.

[HereSince1628]

7. I fully expect an exhuberant clash equal to 2008.

I expect, in the end, some embittered P.U.M.A.s

I am going to really enjoy watching the committed pursuit of desperate, unlikely, idealism.

[upaloopa]

8. Not me I will not be here if it is like that

I don't want to read all that put down crap.

[Vincardog]

2. There was also a time when the Surgeon General said Cigarettes were good for you, and there was

no way they could be regulated.

[HereSince1628]

4. Yep.

[Dont call me Shirley]

3. Optimism and hope are not dead. One pulled cotter pin can break the whole machine!

[whatchamacallit]

5. That's all over

Now we are consigned to a slow death by incrementalism.

[HereSince1628]

9. Maybe but don't count on that. There is no political equivalent to a watch escapement

limiting change to the pace of the winding and unwinding of a hair-spring.

History is full of seemingly well cemented dogma that give way in rapid, exponential shifts to new paradigms.

[whatchamacallit]

17. Viva la revolution! n/t

[F4lconF16]

27. Hear, hear! nt

[OKNancy]

6. I'm a Boomer and I remember Nixon

[HereSince1628]

11. Me too. THe sucker signed the Clean Water and Clean Air acts and put Ruckleshaus

in charge of the EPA.

Hoot!! Impossible? Yes it was. But, I.T. H.A.P.P.E.N.E.D.

[OKNancy]

14. yes, of course I am aware of that. I am also aware that he did it totally as a political move

because he wanted something.
No real Boomer would defend Nixon.

[HereSince1628]

16. Oh he was a b'st'rd, but WE LEFT HIM WITH NO CHOICE!!

That feeling was glorious!

[greatauntoftriplets]

18. This boomer will never defend Nixon.

Never trusted him from an early age.

[hifiguy]

21. My dad, born in 1909, said he'd never trust Nixon

any farther than he could throw him and once told me that "that bastard (Nixon) is so goddamn crooked two guys have to help him screw his pants on every morning."

[HereSince1628]

22. I'm not at all defending Nixon. I think "WE" forced him into doing the impossible

And by WE I mostly mean the boomers who pushed the environmental movement in the streets.

A campaign that was at its start, Hopeless. College students against the establishment, in the midst of an era when college students were just seen as radicals with poor personal hygiene

[dixiegrrrrl]

26. I'm a boomer and I remember the feeling in the 70's that we could do anything

Was the Age of Aquarius, filled with hopeful positive energy, and many social changes.
Nixon slunk out of office propelled by a perfect storm of boos, and ...get this, children...even the newspapers were telling the truth about him!!!
god, it was such a good era.

Then we entered the age of the Robber Barons again, and they have been on the prod for over 30 years.

I am watching the constant demonstrations across the country, feeling hopeful again.

[LiberalArkie]

29. I am a boomer and I once knew the boomer who wrote part of the assembly language

code for the Voyager space crafts that are still out there doing the impossible. We believed that "the impossible just took a little bit longer". And you know what was funny, the people that were paying the 90% on their taxes were proud to do it because it helped build new clean water systems and sanitary sewer systems. The taxes build new highways, new airports, new schools with physics and electronics labs. We had very lofty dreams and did not see any reason they could not be achieved. That was until the Reagan and Reagan-lites decided that no we are not capable of such things.

I want people in Washington that are dreamers of fantastic things. I will not vote for anyone who is not.

[Pooka Fey]

30. + Infinity

I want people in Washington that are dreamers of fantastic things. I will not vote for anyone who is not.

Me too. "Eat your peas" isn't cutting it anymore.

[brooklynite]

10. There is a SUBSTANTIAL difference between those and Bernie Sanders getting elected

In those cases, a failure would have results in retention of the status quo

If Bernie Sanders is nominated and LOSES, the result will be far worse than the status quo.

[HereSince1628]

13. What else boomers share? Knowledge that "Fear is the Mind Slayer"

This is the endowment we received from history.

We have NOTHING to fear, but fear itself.

[H2O Man]

12. "Boomer" here.

I was a dirt-poor kid from the outside of a tiny hamlet. I loved to box. Went to every big city, and challenged their top gun. I loved nothing more than to be given "no chance." Didn't win every fight, but I did win over 97% of them.

As a social-political activist, I've approached every contest that same way.

I love underdogs.

[HereSince1628]

15. I think many of the favorite movies/books of boomers share that.

As the sun sets on our generation, I would love us to remember how that sunset always found us longing for 'what COULD be'.

[Piasladic]

19. I was raised by a Boomer

He taught me that the fight is worthwhile. I love me some Bernie.

[pinboy3niner]

24. Fighting the good fight, even when the odds are impossible

ALDONZA: Why do you do these things?

DON QUIXOTE
What things?

ALDONZA
These ridiculous... the things you do!

DON QUIXOTE
I hope to add some measure of grace to the world.

ALDONZA
The world's a dung heap and we are maggots that crawl on it!

DON QUIXOTE
My Lady knows better in her heart.

ALDONZA
What's in my heart will get me halfway to hell.
And you, Señor Don Quixote-you're going to take
such a beating!

DON QUIXOTE
Whether I win or lose does not matter.

ALDONZA
What does?

DON QUIXOTE
Only that I follow the quest.

ALDONZA
(spits)
That for your Quest!
(turns, marches away; stops, turns bock
and asks, awkwardly)
What does that mean... quest?

DON QUIXOTE
It is the mission of each true knight...
His duty... nay, his privilege!
To dream the impossible dream,
To fight the unbeatable foe,
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go;
To right the unrightable wrong.

To love, pure and chaste, from afar,
To try, when your arms are too weary,
To reach the unreachable star!

This is my Quest to follow that star,
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far,
To fight for the right
Without question or pause,
To be willing to march into hell
For a heavenly cause!

And I know, if I'll only be true
To this glorious Quest,
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest.

And the world will be better for this,
That one man, scorned and covered with scars,
Still strove, with his last ounce of courage,
To reach the unreachable stars!


--From Man of La Mancha

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

20. If I could vote for George McGovern

(which I did! ) I can vote for Bernie Sanders!

[hifiguy]

23. When I was 16 I went around sticking McGovern literature

in people's storm-door handles. Two years too young to vote for him, though.

Can't wait to vote for Bernie.

[HereSince1628]

25. I got to vote in my first general election by absentee ballot, from Vietnam.

And I cast my vote for McGovern.

[Generic Other]

34. I was too young to vote

but I shook George McGovern's hand in front of the Labor Temple in my hometown. And he would have made a hell of a better president than Tricky Dick.

[Pooka Fey]

28. Long lineage of union working folk, democrats. I was a young toddler when JFK

was assassinated. Although I was too young to understand what was going on, my mom said I was crying my eyes out on that day in November, 1963. I understood that something catastrophic had happened. One of the 1st books I remember was a Life Magazine picture book of JFK's funeral. Those pictures were so sad, so compelling - I'm marked by that event.

52 years later, I am convinced that that horrible day was the beginning of our current Oligarchic nightmare. We Americans were brutally robbed of our chance to become a strong social democracy.

There is a Taoist Law of Reversion - "Reversions of forces is a dynamic law of Tao, a mysterious property of the Yin-yang interaction." http://www.radiantdolphinpress.com/pages/taoism_made_simple.html

Maybe it's time.

[NorthCarolina]

31. It isn't about "being impossible", it's really about

CONVINCING you and others that "it's impossible".

[HereSince1628]

32. It sometimes seems it's about TRYING to convince us of that...

But, I really do think that at it's core, boomers embrace a righteous struggle over pragmatic relaxation.

This party could be SO DIFFERENT if it was pursuing righteous causes over the pragmatic and the inevitable.

[nashville_brook]

33. Gen-X here, and i feel the same way.

We divested apartheid. Fought back against AIDS. Raised LGBT issues to the forefront where we're now actually mainstream. First black president.

ALL LONG SHOTS. All seemed doomed from the start. Here's to more long shots and hail mary passes. They're what really changes things.

[RobertEarl]

35. This is the type of thread that makes DU

GREAT! Thank you all!

I did my first "Vote Bernie" conversation today. One a day will make the worst go away.

[liberal_at_heart]

36. The Labor Movement, the Civil Rights Movement, Women's Suffrage Movement were all

idealistic and impossible dreams. We made those dreams come true. It is time for another labor movement in my opinion.