The earlier poster made the point that Bernie Sanders will beat republican candidates. This projection flies in the face of your strategy that as loyal Democrats, we Progressives again must accept the lesser of two evils (Hillary).
For the first time in many years we have the chance to nominate a candidate whose ideas are in sync with the American and certainly with those Progressives. We laugh when you call poll tested lip service news. We laugh when your candidate is either always late to the dance or states the obvious. We laugh when your candidate tries to duck issues which define her political identity which certainly is not progressive on issues of income inequity and protection of the environment. Her positions are parsed and poll tested but only accepted if they pose no significant losses to Banks, Wall Street, the Health Insurance industry, Major Multi-National Corporations, Gambling Industry Owners, and other millionaire and billionaires.
The battle for the democratic nomination is a battle for a real change. We older Progressives want a return to the real economic policies that allowed better times. Times we enjoyed as young people in the 50s and early 60s as our country prospered under the ideas of Progressive and good will Populism, a time when large universities taught business ethics and corporations actually had ethics, a time when Unions were increasing the wages and the economic clout (read purchasing power), a time before republican strategists and candidates openly grabbed hate and division as a method to win elections in Indiana, Ohio, a time where knew there was income equality, a time when whites and African Americans were paid equally in Union shops and Union Companies, a time when a 2 income family meant two cars, ability to send your kids to college without long term debt by saving and paying as they went, good jobs for students so they could actually pay their own college tuition, etc etc.
Younger people too see a need for a real change too if they are to avoid a very dim future. They see debt, lower income jobs, parents dying and no longer being able to help, they see a country with open racial division, with increasingly more living poverty and less and less in greater wealth and they see no real security as they see that no matter how hard they may work and how much they may make in terms of output, it can never make them secure. They know the system of economics and government has been rigged against working people to divert an ever increasing share of their county's output and profits to the same groups who provide the bulk of Hillary's funding.
We older economic progressives have joined with the young. Our ideals are universal. They work everywhere.
Whether Hillary would win by a landslide and Bernie just by a little is only a reflection of the need to fight her donors. You just keep plodding alone as what some progressives call sheeples, following like sheep the democratic party as your shepherd, oblivious that wolves within the party are helping to eat your lambs, just in smaller and more acceptable quantities. We cannot be responsible to DINOs if we want to work for the people. To us, Hillary is at best a Rockefeller Republican and can only appear to be a democrat because the republicans have moved so far to the right in their embrace of hate and division and create racism, sexism, misplaced nationalism, Teaparty ism etc. . Hillary campaigns as the anointed one and she certainly is, but she was anointed by 3rd way democrats, Beltway commentators, Main Stream Media etc. at the behest of the very rich.
Bernie Sanders says their name (her financial backers) and takes bold populist positions we older progressives in the democratic party believe in. We believe a well regulated capitalism can produce a great society , a society more equal, more fair, more productive, and more humane than what will occur if we continue the too large influence of Big Business and the rich which allows it to impoverish our people, to fight our attempts to organize, to destroy our access to facts through Man Stream Media, to turn our children into poorly educated and needy workers for little wages. We have seen and lived a better way. We must bear witness to the young, we must pump up their dreams, and we must shield them from the same tactics of separation and deflection applied by 3rd Way democrats and republicans alike based on our experience. We ask that Hillary supporters in the democratic party look at her positions especially as they relate to economic policies as a whole, especially her non-support of Banking and Wall Street regulation, and relate that to what is best for the people.
Progressives are the future, no matter what label you put on us, Bernie Sanders at this time supports the same ideas we have held for decades. We believed the democratic party represented our best chance at doing what was most supportive of our values. We now have a chance to support a candidate who we believe will champion our ideals and work toward a return of better times because we have seen better times, imperfect but better in so many ways.
We people who saw our more golden age destroyed by falsehoods and hatred now with unity with the students and millennials, and support from Greens, Socialists, Working Family parties, Activists within The African American community community, LGTQs and many many disillusioned independents can retake this country to remake it more
like the one we loved. We invite you Hillary supporters to quit the path of least resistance and work for all the values you most hold dear. We believe if you should actually look at what is possible, ignore the Main Stream slander and mis-characterization, listen to Bernie speak , live or recorded, where possible and by all means listen to Hillary. I know
that every time Bernie speaks I almost nod off in agreement because his unchanging positions I have heard many times before or I can predict them based on my own values as a republican. I also know that the more Hillary takes positions, the influence of her rich backers is evident-witness her non-support of reinstating Glass-Steagall, her continued support of NAFTA and current support of the TPP etc. It looks to us Bernie people as see her positions she clearly has a conflict of interest between the economic opportunity the people desire and the unrestrained piracy her financial backers desire. This conflict between the classes has been a constant as any one who actually knows the history of this country, usually the rich win. But as a result of difficult times, the power of the rich has to be restrained, as Franklin Roosevelt did during the depression, and as Obama has somewhat done with underfunded stimulus packages, and the underfunded Dodd Franks activity and an embattled Consumer Financial Agency. But these steps by Obama do little if anything to remedy the problem. They only provide some minor relief and protection from the greatest failures of our rich greedy class. The do nothing of substance to address economic inequality. Obama never promised to do this. He never supported any governmental actions to address this directly except a return to tax rates of the Clinton days and could not even achieve that even though he was willing to cut the most beloved progressive/socialist program -social security. Obama cannot really help the black community rebound from and continue to fight the racism used to hurt it. He must first say the name but saying the name is not as Black Lives Matter to point at injustice without identifying the cause. The racism is used to justify so called deserved poverty, white privilege, glamorize police as soldiers facing death at every turn, and create fear and strife. I read recently an article purporting to list the causes of racism but these turned out only to be a catalog for some to exploit weaknesses everyone has to a degree. Nothing was said about who needed this racism, why this racism was systematized here in the US for the benefit of occupants of the rich donor class to serve both Northern industrialists
and former slave owners in their quest for more relative wealth ( income inequity). Today the current occupiers of that glass have created an oligarchy in their interest and not in ours.
Again we ask you Hillary supporters to stand back from Main Stream Media Hype, consider the agenda of the people talking, learn our country's real history, make your own analyzes, and patriotically vote with the values in your heart.
We can win for the people. We Bernie Sanders supporters are working to make sure we will have a real choice, not just the lesser of evils.
lesser of evils.
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