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America faces a terrible choice between Sanders and Trump

It seems The Economist has hit the nail on the head here. With America potentially facing a choice between an odious weasel like Trump and a quasi stalinist like Sanders.


Sometimes people wake from a bad dream only to discover that they are still asleep and that the nightmare goes on. This is the prospect facing America if, as seems increasingly likely, the Democrats nominate Bernie Sanders as the person to rouse America from President Donald Trump’s first term. Mr Sanders won the primary in New Hampshire, almost won in Iowa, trounced his rivals in Nevada and is polling well in South Carolina. Come Super Tuesday next week, in which 14 states including California and Texas allot delegates, he could amass a large enough lead to make himself almost impossible to catch.

Moderate Democrats worry that nominating Mr Sanders would cost them the election. This newspaper worries that forcing Americans to decide between him and Mr Trump would result in an appalling choice with no good outcome. It will surprise nobody that we disagree with a self-described democratic socialist over economics, but that is just the start. Because Mr Sanders is so convinced that he is morally right, he has a dangerous tendency to put ends before means. And, in a country where Mr Trump has whipped up politics into a frenzy of loathing, Mr Sanders’s election would feed the hatred.

On economics Mr Sanders is misunderstood. He is not a cuddly Scandinavian social democrat who would let companies do their thing and then tax them to build a better world. Instead, he believes American capitalism is rapacious and needs to be radically weakened. He puts Jeremy Corbyn to shame, proposing to take 20% of the equity of companies and hand it over to workers, to introduce a federal jobs-guarantee and to require companies to qualify for a federal charter obliging them to act for all stakeholders in ways that he could define. On trade, Mr Sanders is at least as hostile to open markets as Mr Trump is. He seeks to double government spending, without being able to show how he would pay for it. When unemployment is at a record low and nominal wages in the bottom quarter of the jobs market are growing by 4.6%, his call for a revolution in the economy is an epically poor prescription for what ails America.

In putting ends before means, Mr Sanders displays the intolerance of a Righteous Man. He embraces perfectly reasonable causes like reducing poverty, universal health care and decarbonising the economy, and then insists on the most unreasonable extremes in the policies he sets out to achieve them (see article). He would ban private health insurance (not even Britain, devoted to its National Health Service, goes that far). He wants to cut billionaires’ wealth in half over 15 years. A sensible ecologist would tax fracking for the greenhouse gases it produces. To Mr Sanders that smacks of a dirty compromise: he would ban it outright.

Sometimes even the ends are sacrificed to Mr Sanders’s need to be righteous. Making university cost-free for students is a self-defeating way to alleviate poverty, because most of the subsidy would go to people who are, or will be, relatively wealthy. Decriminalising border-crossing and breaking up Immigration and Customs Enforcement would abdicate one of the state’s first duties. Banning nuclear energy would stand in the way of his goal to create a zero-carbon economy.

So keenly does Mr Sanders fight his wicked rivals at home, that he often sympathises with their enemies abroad. He has shown a habit of indulging autocrats in Cuba and Nicaragua, so long as the regime in question claims to be pursuing socialism. He is sceptical about America wielding power overseas, partly from an honourable conviction that military adventures do more harm than good. But it also reflects his contempt for the power-wielders in the Washington establishment.

Last is the effect of a President Sanders on America’s political culture. The country’s political divisions helped make Mr Trump’s candidacy possible. They are now enabling Mr Sanders’s rise. The party’s leftist activists find his revolution thrilling. They have always believed that their man would triumph if only the neoliberal Democratic Party elite would stop keeping him down. His supporters seem to reserve almost as much hatred for his Democratic opponents as they do for Republicans.

This speaks to Mr Sanders’s political style. When faced with someone who disagrees with him, his instinct is to spot an establishment conspiracy, or to declare that his opponent is confused and will be put straight by one of his political sermons. When asked how he would persuade Congress to eliminate private health insurance (something which 60% of Americans oppose), Mr Sanders replies that he would hold rallies in the states of recalcitrant senators until they relented.

A presidency in which Mr Sanders travelled around the country holding rallies for a far-left programme that he could not get through Congress would widen America’s divisions. It would frustrate his supporters, because the president’s policies would be stymied by Congress or the courts. On the right, which has long been fed a diet of socialist bogeymen, the spectacle of an actual socialist in the White House would generate even greater fury. Mr Sanders would test the proposition that partisanship cannot get any more bitter.

The mainstream three-quarters of Democrats have begun to tell themselves that Mr Sanders would not be so bad. Some point out that he would not be able to do many of the things he promises. This excuse-making, with its implication that Mr Sanders should be taken seriously but not literally, sounds worryingly familiar. Mr Trump has shown that control of the regulatory state, plus presidential powers over trade and over foreign policy, give a president plenty of room for manoeuvre. His first term suggests that it is unwise to dismiss what a man seeking power says he wants to do with it.

Enter Sandersman
If Mr Sanders becomes the Democratic nominee, America will have to choose in November between a corrupt, divisive, right-wing populist, who scorns the rule of law and the constitution, and a sanctimonious, divisive, left-wing populist, who blames a cabal of billionaires and businesses for everything that is wrong with the world. All this when the country is as peaceful and prosperous as at any time in its history. It is hard to think of a worse choice. Wake up, America!


https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/02/27/bernie-sanders-nominee
(edited 4 years ago)

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Ok but ranting about Sanders, without providing even a single suggestion of who he wants people to vote for...seems like he is willingly creating a lesser of two evils dilemma that there isn't even yet between Trump and Sanders....yet he's insulting Sanders while simply acknowledging Trumps imperfections, yet providing credits to trump as well...lol this is an article to support Trump..



I'm surprised you didn't catch that. Nap...putting up an article that supports Trump....progress? :congrats:
Reply 2
Original post by Bang Outta Order
Ok but ranting about Sanders, without providing even a single suggestion of who he wants people to vote for...seems like he is willingly creating a lesser of two evils dilemma that there isn't even yet between Trump and Sanders....yet he's insulting Sanders while simply acknowledging Trumps imperfections, yet providing credits to trump as well...lol this is an article to support Trump..


Who is this 'he' you're referring to sorry?

I'm surprised you didn't catch that. Nap...putting up an article that supports Trump....progress? :congrats:

The article doesnt support Trump? You can bash Sanders without ipso facto supporting Trump.
Reply 3
Original post by Ascend

lol it is quite uncanny. Isn't it? :flutter:
Original post by Napp
Who is this 'he' you're referring to sorry?

The article doesnt support Trump?


...the he is whoever wrote the ****ing article obviously. Don't be a grammar nazi and argue semantics.

To the second bit: Yes, I'm glad you're asking :h: shows how unsure you really are. But really... The last part was a joke. It wasn't like....mocking. if you feel mocked....awwww sowwy. Now I'm mocking. 😊
Sanders ftw :smile:
Reply 7
Original post by Bang Outta Order
...the he is whoever wrote the ****ing article obviously. Don't be a grammar nazi and argue semantics.

Then speak in plain English :rolleyes: and possibly also learn what a "grammar Nazi" is.

To the second bit: Yes, I'm glad you're asking :h: shows how unsure you really are. But really... The last part was a joke. It wasn't like....mocking. if you feel mocked....awwww sowwy. Now I'm mocking. 😊

You're not familiar with a rhetorical question? Ah. My apologies for overestimating you again.
To be honest i havent a clue what you're on about, it's clear you havent, or can't read the article so i think i'll be you and your particularly odd Trump loving comments adieu.
Lol oh napp 👶
Bernie Sanders for the win 2020
Original post by BlueIndigoViolet
Sanders ftw :smile:

I wouldn't have minded Biden...

Obama could be doing more for his friend though....kind of letting Biden slip by the wayside lol
so many things wrong with that article, I don't even know where to start.
Reply 12
Original post by NotNotBatman
so many things wrong with that article, I don't even know where to start.

The beginning? I mean you can disagree with the interpretation (The Economist having an ideological bent) but the facts seem pretty clear cut to me.
Reply 13
Because Mr Sanders is so convinced that he is morally right, he has a dangerous tendency to put ends before means. And, in a country where Mr Trump has whipped up politics into a frenzy of loathing, Mr Sanders’s election would feed the hatred.

His supporters seem to reserve almost as much hatred for his Democratic opponents as they do for Republicans.

There's an interesting discussion to be had on the religious-like (puritan) moralising of both socialists like Sanders and many of his 'woke' surrogates/Bros on the social justice front. It's no coincidence that nasty and divisive rhetoric has come largely from that base within the Democratic field.

In putting ends before means, Mr Sanders displays the intolerance of a Righteous Man. He embraces perfectly reasonable causes like reducing poverty, universal health care and decarbonising the economy, and then insists on the most unreasonable extremes in the policies he sets out to achieve them (see article). He would ban private health insurance (not even Britain, devoted to its National Health Service, goes that far).

:yy:

So keenly does Mr Sanders fight his wicked rivals at home, that he often sympathises with their enemies abroad. He has shown a habit of indulging autocrats in Cuba and Nicaragua, so long as the regime in question claims to be pursuing socialism. He is sceptical about America wielding power overseas, partly from an honourable conviction that military adventures do more harm than good. But it also reflects his contempt for the power-wielders in the Washington establishment.

:yy: And leaving the door open for which competing powers to take over?

On trade, Mr Sanders is at least as hostile to open markets as Mr Trump is. He seeks to double government spending, without being able to show how he would pay for it. When unemployment is at a record low and nominal wages in the bottom quarter of the jobs market are growing by 4.6%, his call for a revolution in the economy is an epically poor prescription for what ails America.

:yy:
It's fun watching the MSM turn their vilifying sights off Trump and on to Sanders. Then when Sanders wins the nomination, if they don't manage to cheat him out of it again, watch them have to roll it all back, or go on to November admitting they think Trump is the better of their two choices.
Haha 😁👍
(edited 4 years ago)
Sanders would be a tougher opponent than Biden against Trump on TV - he's sharper and nastier than Biden and that is what is needed against Trump. I fear that Biden-vs-Trump in a head to head would be another rerun of Clinton-Trump.

Trump's machine. funded by the endless Koch and Christian Right extremist pockets, will run the 'Dems are all socialists' nonsense against any Democrat nominee - it isn't just a Sanders thing. It's also not true, sadly. I wish we were going to have a proper socialist government of the United States. In the past, whenever someone has looked plausibly likely to win an election and be at the same time genuinely on the Left, the authorities in the US have arranged for their execution.
Reply 16
Original post by Napp
It seems The Economist has hit the nail on the head here. With America potentially facing a choice between an odious weasel like Trump and a quasi stalinist like Sanders.

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/02/27/bernie-sanders-nominee

:toofunny:Quasi Stalinist :toofunny:
Reply 17
Original post by QE2
:toofunny:Quasi Stalinist :toofunny:

What can i say, i don't overly like him.
Original post by Napp
What can i say, i don't overly like him.

You can use the term correctly for one.

Sanders would be firmly centrist of left of centre in almost ANY EU country.
Reply 19
Original post by Aayush :)
You can use the term correctly for one.

You should probably crack open your dictionary and look up what "quasi" means, there was a good reason i put it on the front.

Sanders would be firmly centrist of left of centre in almost ANY EU country.

You try and accuse me of using poor English and then post this? Hm.
Yeah, this is America NOT Europe. Never mind the ones in Europe don't have a history of defending socialist dictators, honeymooning in the USSR and so on.

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