Our Best Bet is Bernie

[JaneQPublic]

96. "The Liberal Case Against Bernie"

I concur with this viewpoint from "The Nation" magazine:

https://www.thenation.com/article/bernie-sanders-electability-eric-alterman/

Sanders, of all the major Democratic contenders, is the one who will make Donald Trump’s reelection most likely.
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Sanders today insists on calling himself a “socialist,” but he no longer holds most of the positions historically associated with socialism. He should know this because he was a serious socialist between 1972 and 1976, when he ran and lost in four statewide Vermont races on the Liberty Union Party line. His platform called for the nationalization of pretty much every industry in America, together with a 100 percent income tax on America’s top earners. And Sanders was still a socialist in 1980, when he served as an elector for the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party, which favored the abolition of the US military budget and proclaimed itself in solidarity with both Cuba and Iran at a time when the latter held over 52 Americans hostage.

I held some of the same views myself as a young man, but I am not running for president. And if I ever thought I might, I probably wouldn’t have agreed to attend a rally in 1985 in Managua, Nicaragua, with a crowd chanting, “Here, there, everywhere, the Yankee will die,” while the Nicaraguan president, Daniel Ortega, condemned my country’s “state terrorism” (accurate as the term was).

I mention this appearance because, according to reporting by journalist Kurt Eichenwald, Republicans have it and similar events on tape. They also have binders full of statements made in support of the kind of socialism that Sanders backed before he became what he is today: a typical New Deal–style liberal or European social democrat. Much of Sanders’s agenda is popular, but calling yourself a “socialist” is, according to recent polls, a losing proposition—74 percent of independent voters disapprove of it, with just 9 percent approving.

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And I’ve not even mentioned his weakness, relative to Clinton, with crucial Democratic constituencies like African Americans and women. We can also count out the many voters who are uncomfortable with criticism of Israel (much as I admire Sanders for that). A Sanders nomination would, I fear, deliver the country to Trump. It would depress turnout among all the groups I mentioned... and keep a significant number of swing voters in Trump’s column. Additionally, some of the moms and grandmas who make up the backbone of the #Resistance told researcher Theda Skocpol that, owing to Sanders’s harsh treatment of Clinton in the 2016 election, they might sit out 2020 if he’s the nominee.

MORE...
https://www.thenation.com/article/bernie-sanders-electability-eric-alterman/