Sanders’ Views Becoming More Mainstream Than Clinton’s Conservative Views

With frontrunner Hillary Clinton having been found to have committed  major ethics violations as Secretary of State, showing a tremendous drop in favorability and trust in the polls, and having views significantly to the right of a Democratic Party which is becoming more liberal, it is time for Plan B. With the momentum being displayed by Bernie Sanders, Plan B just might be Plan Bernie.

While Hillary Clinton is a very poor choice to run in the general election, some fear that Bernie Sanders might have difficulty winning because of calling himself a Democratic Socialist (even if his views are closer to European-style social democrats than socialism). It is questionable if that matters considering that Barack Obama won the general election twice, despite being called a Marxist Socialist by the Republicans. As the Star-Ledger Editorial Board put it, Sanders’ socialism is mainstream:

He has made income inequality a central theme, and he wants to revamp the tax system so that the wealthy pay a larger share. Check and check: Gallup reports that 63 percent call wealth distribution unfair, and 52 percent favor heavier taxes on the rich.

He is scathing about how big money has corrupted politics, and 61 percent of agree that Citizens United should be overturned. That includes 71 percent of Republicans who want to limit campaign contributions.

He wants to reduce student debt, at a time when 79 percent believe that education is no longer affordable for everyone, and 82 percent support creating low-cost loans for education.

He believes government should be proactive to reverse global warming, which is consistent with 71 percent of Americans, while 48 percent of Republicans say they are more likely to vote for a candidate who fights climate change.

He also endorses a $15 federal minimum wage and believes that Wall Street banks should be shrunk, two concepts that poll very well.

Even the term “socialism” doesn’t poll like it used to, because younger voters believe Sanders is espousing a broader social rights agenda. The 18-to-29 bloc even finds socialism (36 percent) almost as favorable as capitalism (39 percent).

Or perhaps they just know that socialist precepts, in large part, represent the civic and cultural foundation of our nation.

Consider: Many things we take for granted today were conceived by leftist coalitions that included Socialists and other Progressives, such as the eight-hour workday, women’s suffrage, Medicare, and Social Security. Some were used as the platform for Eugene Debs’ bid for the White House a century ago, though back then they called it “social insurance.”

Labor rights, decent work conditions, and paid maternity leave were in large part socialist ideas, too, some championed by a Socialist congressman from the lower East Side named Meyer London.

And civil liberty was an ironclad tenet throughout our history – as long as your skin wasn’t a tint darker than the majority – but when we interned Japanese Americans in 1942, one of the loudest objections was voiced by the prominent Socialist of the time, Norman Thomas.

Meanwhile the alternative is Hillary Clinton, who helped George Bush lie the country into the Iraq war with false claims that Saddam had connections to al Qaeda, continued to push for increased military intervention as Secretary of State, is weak on issues including civil liberties, government transparency, and the environment, and shows the influence of her association with the religious right in her positions on social issues. Bernie Sanders’ positions might be more mainstream than Clinton’s, despite her selective attempts to sound more liberal, and are definitely preferable for a Democratic candidate.

Related Posts:
Bernie Sanders Contrasts His Views With Those Of Hillary Clinton
What Bernie Sanders Believes

1 Comment

  1. 1
    JimZ says:

    Indeed.  The country has been so inundated with the Murdoch/Koch propaganda for so many decades, consisting mostly of slogans, inuendo, and ad hominem attacks, that mainstream ideas were stuffed beneath the surface.  It took a brave soul like Sanders to unearth them.

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