This! "Candidates preaching fear will tend to attract followers who tear others down..."

[redqueen]

Link to tweet

[Sherman A1]

1. K&R

[Fiendish Thingy]

2. But what if we can't afford to hope, and can only afford to be afraid?

Asking for a pragmatic, centrist friend who wants a "safe" candidate...

[Hortensis]

3. Yes. Populist leaders, notably, have to divide to gain power, though.

If they could be elected by united, hopeful majorities they wouldn't bother trolling for those motivated by fanning fear, resentment and antagonism. Or, sure, some would because that's their nature also, but fewer. And when they do manage to smash and win, it's over the will of the traditional majorities and keeping power, not unity, is their aim.

Growing up in NY, it's likely Trump would have run as a Democrat if that wasn't a guaranteed loser for him. There's no market for him among "hopeful" liberals, conservative power centers were too organized for him to find a place among them, and he had to go RW populist.

Pretty much the same for radical-leaning Sanders also, who has never been interested in becoming a member of and appealing to the Democrats' large, united, hopeful-liberal left. But there was demand for a LW populist leader.

Btw, Putin's also a hopeful sort. Our intelligence services say he hopes to unite sufficient RW and LW populists and the rest of the RW under one populist leader to create an electoral majority. It'd be RW, of course, and in our nation that "majority" only need to be a minority in the right places.

[billpolonsky]

5. The audacity of...

...NOPE

[ritapria]

4. The "Radical-leaning " Sanders

Wants Medicare for All …..The system the rest of the developed world has adopted long ago …….Left-wing Economic Populism isn't the result of hate or mental illness ...Half of the County is living paycheck to paycheck …...2/3 rds of our people have less than 1000 dollars in savings ...Wages , adjusted for inflation , have been frozen for 45 years .. America's manufacturing base has been hollowed out to a pulp .. These horrors lead to the election of an Orange Reality TV host ….People want a party that's fights for them - not the Donors ……….Is such a hope "Radical " ?

[Hortensis]

8. By all measures, including especially his own.

He has great contempt for both mainstream parties, which he claims in various ways at almost every public appearance are so much like each other the differences hardly matter.

(Suuure, hardly any difference at all between creating Social Security and being determined to destroy it, signing the civil rights acts and turning dogs loose on people who fight for them, creating the clean air and water acts and fighting for climate change action versus fighting all of those tooth and nail.)

Imo, the most reasonable term for him, without going farther, is radical, in both personality and ideology (two different meanings to that word). Certainly can't claim he's mainstream, which he considers an insult; he denies being liberal and (usually) Democrat, and has proudly identified for decades as socialist and dreamed of Nicaraguan-style socialist revolution in the U.S. even though he can't give socialism away to the mainstream.

What else? It's understandable that some Sanders supporters are confused, though. Quotes range everywhere from flat-out statements to waffling so obscure it's hard to pin down any meaning, see the link. Such as defining democracy as socialism and socialism as democracy. Uhuh.

This at least is implacably clear: "I am not, nor have I ever been, a liberal Democrat." Bernie Sanders discussing the people and ideology that have dominated the Democratic Party for over the past century.

" “In Vermont, everybody knows that I am a socialist and that many people in our movement, not all, are socialists. And as often as not — and this is an interesting point that is the honest-to-God truth — what people will say is, ‘I don’t really know what socialism is, but if you’re not a Democrat or a Republican, you’re OK with me.’ That’s true. And I think there has been too much of a reluctance on the part of progressives and radicals to use the word ‘socialism.’”

“Do they think I’m afraid of the word? I’m not afraid of the word.”

The last two are from a 2015 collection of Sanders' obfuscations that reveal as strongly as anything can that he can't give away socialism, much less sell it, and apparently has had most success through confusion and obfuscation.

14 things Bernie Sanders has said about socialism
https://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/14-things-bernie-sanders-has-said-about-socialism-120265

[ehrnst]

9. No, the rest of the world gets to UHC very differently than Bernie's MFA.

So that's not correct.

[Blue_true]

10. That distinction slides of some people's backs like water off a duck.

Pretty much all of Europe instituted their social warfare policies after war ravaged the continent. Those changes allowed more of societies to survive by sharing the wealth.

Unless Bernie and Warren get to rebuild the USA from war, instituting things like MFA and free college tuition will go over like a lead balloon.

He didn't live to see his plans come to fruition, but Abraham Lincoln was the last President who got to change the country after war, with his proposals for an intercontinental railroad and land grant public colleges. FDR comes next after the Great Depression had significantly damaged the country.

[Humanist_Activist]

13. You think we require a crisis as large as bombing the country flat to institute a UHC system?

In that case, why advocate for improving things at all?

And, just to be clear, "free college tuition" is something that was widespread in this country, we are a backsliding social welfare state, after all.

[Blue_true]

16. Yes, in order to make massive in scale change, the country will need to have

experienced massive trauma. Having some people die while most Americans can get healthcare won't be traumatic enough. That disappointing reality is exactly why expanding out the ACA makes by far the most sense if we want to ever universally cover people. Shooting for something like the MFA of Warren and Sanders will only insure defeat and setbacks.

College in this country was never free. In fact, up until around 1945, only something like 9% of people that finished high school even went to college, and many of them were from welloff families. Governor Edmund G. Brown implemented reduced rate college in California, but Reagan came along and successfully attacked that model under the guise of challenging college campus radicalism. But nowhere else in the USA had free college. When I went to the University of Florida in the mid-late seventies, I had to pay hundreds of dollars per quarter in tuition and fees, not as much as kids pay today, but it certainly was not free and did require summer work and loans.

I really believe that people that are running around talking about MFA and free college need to stop and educate themselves on exactly HOW and WHEN Europe installed their healthcare system, the facts of that blows their arguments for a massive lift like MFA out of the water. As for free college, just studying the history of college in the USA without gluing rose-colored glasses to one's eyes would show that college is simply more expensive today, it was never free. Maybe when some people on the left get their feet grounded in facts, they will stop refusing to vote for democrats at critical times and we can finally make a sustained push toward what they claim they want.

[myohmy2]

6. "Candidates preaching hope will tend to attract followers who build others up."

"History teaches that either type can win an election. But ONLY hope has any shot at uniting the Country."
……………………..

"..(Bernie)...you're the 'hope' that we have..."

...God Bless Bernie, our best 'hope'...

[bucolic_frolic]

7. Suddenly deep thinkers are unmasking the truth

that is an excellent tweet, and yesterday there was a British author who showed how the 1% are using lies to hoodwink voters worldwide.

We can't conquer what we don't understand, and now we understand!

[hughee99]

11. Exactly right! That's why we have to unite to stop Trump

From selling out our country, destroying the environment, taking away our rights, and killing people with his racist, sexist and homophobic policies.

[Humanist_Activist]

12. There's no hope to "unite the country" at this time, the most we can hope for...

is that we get an electoral majority. Some people are reachable to all sorts of messages, but others simply are not, and it appears that about 30-35% of the country is, at best, proto-fascist, extremely prejudiced and/or anti-democracy.

[LongtimeAZDem]

14. Wow; I really disagree with you. It will take work, and the desire to reach out, but I have hope

[Humanist_Activist]

15. The types of compromises that would be required to reach out would be unacceptable to...

the majority of democratic constituencies. Some of these are people who obsess about "bathroom bills" still, or want marriage equality overturned, believe affirmative action is anti-white racism, etc. Others want public education to be abolished, and to privatize damn near everything else, even, apparently, the military. And there are others who are outright Nazis or other type of Nationalist. Yes, some can be reached and "deprogrammed" as it were, but most are of older demographics that aren't so mutable. Frankly, a lot of progress is hampered by these groups, and we may have to wait them out.