Borosage: Sanders and Corbyn: There Is An Alternative

[eridani]

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/09/15/sanders-and-corbyn-there-alternative

Jeremy Corbyn, a sexagenarian socialist and vegetarian teetotaler, and for 32 years a prickly, independent backbencher in the British parliament, has been elected in a landslide to lead the British Labour Party. The victory of the “British Bernie Sanders” raises the obvious question: Could that happen here?

British parties and politics are far different from those of the United States. But the two countries have experienced parallel sea-changes in the past. The victory of the “Iron Lady,” movement conservative Maggie Thatcher in 1979, presaged Ronald Reagan’s stunning victory in 1980. The two leaders helped launch the conservative era, arguing in Thatcher’s words, “there is no alternative.”

Bill Clinton packaged himself as a “New Democrat” to tack to these prevailing conservative winds and win the presidency in 1992. Tony Blair followed and imitated, championing “New Labour” to win the lead of the party in 1994 and the country in 1997. Both touted their savvy in embracing conservative positions on welfare, crime and deregulation.

Corbyn’s victory and Sanders’ stunning rise in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination – he now polls better than Clinton in both New Hampshire and Iowa, the only states where voters are paying much attention – suggest a new sea change could be in the making.

Like Sanders, Corbyn has been a principled outsider to his own party as it tacked right. Corbyn was dismissed as “unelectable” from the start, an argument made, as Laurie Penny of the New Statesman wrote, “by three candidates who can’t even win an election against Jeremy Corbyn.” Hillary Clinton’s supporters similarly scorn Sanders as unelectable, even as their candidate falls behind him in early polling.

Beneath the Corbyn victory and the Sanders surge is a revolt against politics as usual. What the chattering gaggles of “political strategists” find it difficult to absorb is how much people are fed up with an establishment politics that has utterly failed them

[Demeter]

1. It is the parallel progress that worries me

I believe Reagan and Thatcher were not public choices, but privately forced upon the public by the money interests.

Similarly, it's turning out that Clinton and Blair were marketed very skillfully, to conceal their puppetmasters' strings.

I would really, REALLY hate to find out that this background manipulation is at work AGAIN!

But the level of Elitist Angst suggests that in this cycle, the People are actually speaking over the droning loudspeakers of the MSM.

God bless the Internet! It is the truest, newest force for democracy and truth, despite 1% attempts to subvert, suppress or sabotage.

[Enthusiast]

3. I believe you nailed it. People are actually speaking over the droning loudspeakers of the MSM.

For the first time in a very very looong time. Let's don't don't mess it up this time.

[Enthusiast]

2. Kicked and recommended!

[merrily]

4. .

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12778559 (Populist Group Post: Our friends across the pond have a view of centrists, too.) I link this post here because it contrasted how American politics treated defeat here (such as occurred at all levels of government in 2010 and 2014) with how British politicians treated a rout in their nation.

BTW, Tony Blair "followed" after Al From and Hillary Clinton toured Europe, trying to sell the DLC gospel there.

I don't think Reagan's victory had a thing to do with Thatcher's, though. Or with much of anything other than Reagan's relatively unique history and personality, and the problems that plagued the Carter/Mondale administration..

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12778559 (What about Mondale, Indeed: Candidate Reagan)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12778873 (What about Mondale, Indeed: 1976 to 1980)

See also, http://www.democraticunderground.com/12779277 (What about Mondale, Indeed: Walter Mondale).