2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Before the big clampdown, I'm gonna say this [View all]anigbrowl
(13,889 posts)We can indeed walk and chew gum at the same time, but the Sanders campaign has opted to do only one of those in practice. As evidence, I point to how little Sanders' stump speech has evolved over the campaign. It's good to be focused, but not to the point of inflexibility.
Myself, I come from a democratic socialist country, so you'd think I should be an automatic of supporter of Sanders, right? And indeed, I share a great many of his goals and agree with many of his general policy prescriptions. But I also recognize that a) democratic socialism imposes a much higher tax burden than Americans are used to paying, and relatively few Americans seem willing to accept that price tab, and b0 while there's a lot of things I like about democratic socialism is has a lot of faults as well, and is far from being the social panacea that its supporters claim to be.
Sanders' pitch seems to be 'if we fix the economic system, everything else will fall into place.' It won't and his failure to recognize or acknowledge that (as well as some other factors) is why I don't take his candidacy that seriously any more.