The Marshmallow Revolution

[earthshine]

Yesterday, during a brief drive to the store, I caught about five minutes of the Stephanie Miller show. (Generally, I do not like the style of her show and its morning silliness. But, it was the right five minutes.) She was speaking to a pro-Bernie caller, and this fellow made an analogy that is informative. It is equally applicable to Hillary.

Both Bernie and Hillary (and their supporters) agree that changes are needed to our political scene, financial realities, and social environments. But how does one make change when Congress is so obstinate?

The answer is marshmallows!

The caller spoke of a common learning game that parents and teachers play with children to develop the personal virtue of delayed gratification. Basically, it goes like this. Offer a child a piece of candy, in this case a marshmallow. Then tell the child, If you can wait 15 minutes before eating this marshmallow, I'll give you another, and you will have two.

The caller continued, [paraphrase] It’s so interesting, even funny, to watch the kids during those 15 minutes. They all get squirmy, and some of them do not make it over the finish line. Then, the caller brought it home. We need to vote straight Democratic tickets for at least several election cycles before we will see the changes we want.

Folks, we will earn one marshmallow for defeating the Republicans in 2016. But don't expect to eat it. We will need to win again in 2018, 2020, 2022, and perhaps beyond -- and we can do it. There's no reason to take a nose dive, like we did in 2010, ceding Congress to the other side. To me, it seems that we ate the marshmallow we earned in 2008, because the change Obama ran on wasn't coming fast enough.

Our two champions (Hillary and Bernie) are in the ring, fighting with each other in a manner that seems honorable. Both sets of policy positions are evolving because of this dialog. Let them fight it out. The purpose of having factional champions is so the rest of us don't get bloodied, with anger and contempt for all.

If we stay united as a party, we will break through the Republican gerrymandering. All three branches of government can be ours.

Peace.

[MisterP]

1. 2010 was a failure of the DNC, not because we weren't sufficiently meek when it came to criticizing

the WH

and David Brock is NOT an honorable fighter, nor is her campaign about a set of policy positions

[Cassiopeia]

2. I don't expect Sanders to walk away from the huge forces he's building

like Obama did.

Sanders knows and says it's going to take a real revolution and this election season is only the first battle, not the entire war.