2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumSanders promotes equality, Trump promotes hate
I absolutely love this compare & contrast piece re: Bernie & tRump, especially because it eloquently explodes the M$M's annoying habit of sliming Bernie with repeated off-handed insinuations re "The similarities between the Sander and Trump campaigns"; while otherwise ignoring Sanders campaign altogether.
Sanders promotes equality, Trump promotes hate
By Brent Budowsky * December 24, 2015 * The Hill
In my previous Contributors piece, I cited a Quinnipiac poll that showed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) running ahead of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump by the landslide magnitude margin of 13 percentage points. Today, we take this analysis to the next level and consider how Sanders and Trump represent different visions of America and different visions of American politics.
Sanders is a powerful leader and visionary of progressive politics who is historically descended from presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt. Sanders is the happy warrior of American politics who rejects personal attacks and negative campaigning in his politics and seeks to build coalitions of common interests behind policies of economic fairness, justice and equality.
Trump is a bitterly divisive figure in American politics who is historically descended from Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.), who ran an ultra-right candidacy in 1964 that led Republicans to a historic landslide defeat, and Trump is also descended from President Richard Nixon, who believed in creating enemies lists and slandering political opponents (who, by the end of his presidency, included virtually everyone in America).
While Sanders is the happy warrior who cheerfully takes his case of economic equality and fairness to the nation, seeking to build a majority coalition for his policies of change we can believe in, Trump is the angry man of American politics who campaigns with vicious words and bizarre facial contortions as he angrily attacks the individuals and groups he showers with scorn and derision every day.
As Sanders said on CNN Thursday morning, Trump "[plays] off the anxiety and the fears" of Americans and scapegoats minority groups and "then [tries] to get us to hate Mexicans or to hate Muslims" and Sanders used the word "hate," as have some principled conservatives who have called Trump a fascist. I have never used the word "fascist" to describe Trump, and do not so so here, but the fact that some Republican conservatives have begun to describe Trump this way is a sign of how far Trump has moved from the politics of civility and mutual respect that is the American political tradition.
Sanders is inclusive, trying to bring voters together by lifting voters up behind a shared interest in economic equality. Trump is bitterly divisive, trying to pit groups of Americans against each other and make America what Abraham Lincoln warned would be a "house divided against itself.
MORE (a very good read): http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/264187-sanders-promotes-equality-trump-promotes-hate
orpupilofnature57
(15,472 posts)99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)Response to orpupilofnature57 (Reply #1)
Post removed
Paka
(2,760 posts)Thanks for the post.
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)I think it may have already been posted, given how few responses, but I could not
resist posting now, so hopefully no one misses it.
farleftlib
(2,125 posts)hopemountain
(3,919 posts)trump does not. i guess this is the clinton campaign's ruse to discredit bernie - by aligning him with trump and bernie supporters to trump supporters. pretty desperate.
Uncle Joe
(58,366 posts)Thanks for the thread, 99th Monkey.